(Y7, March 18th)
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With the amount of noise made by a troop of sixty Gaters, none of the local critters had even attempted to check the raid. Birkathane remembered the sneaky cats – Herpailurus Spumantis – that had caught them by surprise while fleeing the Pyramid area. None of these tried to sneak up on them this time. The natural aggressiveness of the Northworld fauna could be tempered by judicious caution at times.
One of the Gaters was catching up to the vanguard of the raid, looking slightly preoccupied.
“Fontana?”
The First Gater turned his head while trudging ahead.
“Problem?”
“I have Find Prey, and… I think we just got in range.”
Find Prey
Tier 3 Intuition
Passive, Triggered
If it’s found, it will bleed. If it bleeds, it will die.
Locate the highest-rank hostile creature in range. Gives direction, distance, and rank of that enemy.
Maximum distance: 5.8 km
Skill level 58 (base 29)
Advancement: 60%
“You detected something?” Fontana asked.
“Yes. I had a rank 39 normal critter lurking south of us, following us at a distance for the last two hours, but I now register… a 105 Greater Elite west-northwest… in the exact direction we are headed toward.”
Fontana turned toward Birkathane, silently asking for confirmation.
“Sounds correct. We’re about an hour from where I remember the Pyramid. We passed close by on the way in, but not that close.”
“Well, so much for the Pyramid having reset during these months,” Vormacinus said with a large smile.
“If that clearing of yours is large enough, we’ll stop at the edge. Then try to ascertain what’s going on and what to expect.”
The tree cover ended abruptly, with a large circular clearing extending in front of the raid. The area was covered with a sparse yellow-grey moss, extending from the foot of the last trees toward the central structure. The soft brownish ground was visible between the moss patches.
The Pyramid was exactly as Vantegaard remembered. A vast stepped structure, with 2/3rd meter-high stone blocks, making each successive level over almost thirty meters. A flight of stairs made of much smaller stones ran across one of the sides, leading to a dais-like structure with four columns and a slab at the top. From what he remembered, the stairs would then go down into the pyramid proper, which extended below ground.
For that, he liked the fact that you usually did not get full PTSD from Northworld. Traumatic experiences remained traumatic in memory but without the stress-induced scars on your health. Because there had been six peoples’ bodies in there, some of which he’d seen die in person.
And Quandocor had sensed them being removed by the guardians, possibly for “disposal”.
Fontana raised his arm, ordering a complete stop for everyone following.
“That’s it,” said Birkathane, whispering as if the chromed skeletal guardians could hear her from there.
The First Gater looked toward the structure, pensive. Ramon Palacio joined with them, speaking in Spanish. Vormacinus looked at them.
“I was telling Nolo, it does look like an Aztec pyramid.”
“Mayan, I’d say.”
“Uh?” Vormacinus asked, nonplussed.
“Mayan pyramids are straighter. Aztec ones are flatter. This doesn’t look exactly like Tikal, but it’s certainly more abrupt than the classic Aztlan ones.”
Seeing the slightly incredulous look from the World Wrecker leader, Palacio laughed.
“Nolo’s an archeology and ancient construction aficionado.”
Vastragal joined the group and pondered the Pyramid for a couple of seconds before asking, “Do you think there’s a… link between this type of architecture and where you found the first Silvergate? I assume you found it in Panama?”
Fontana remained silent for a while, then ignored part of the question.
“At this point, I’m open to all hypotheses. I’ve never been a fan of those sensational series on cable TV where they were trying to pass off Alien Astronauts and antigravity construction methods for pyramids all over the world. But once I heard about that Pyramid… well, it might be a coincidence. Or it might not be.”
He turned toward Vantegaard.
“I hope you didn’t find anything like a sacrificial altar?”
He snorted. Considering the circumstances, it was a bad joke, but it was still funny. Unless… it wasn’t a joke.
“Nothing like that. The Pyramid was completely bare of anything. Although we did not have time to explore much. No structures, no decorations, nothing, except for that control room at the bottom,” he replied.
“The one with the planetary globe and the trap,” Fontana asked.
“I’d say an alarm system rather than a trap,” he said. “After all, it activated some machinery with a definitive purpose. It’s probably something we missed once we activated the whole thing.”
Vormacinus suddenly pointed toward the Pyramid. Even at that distance, Vantegaard spotted the two shiny skeletons that had come out. He couldn’t make out any detail from there, but the pair simply stopped at the top of the pyramid. After a few seconds, they patrolled around the covered area before returning to the top of the stairs. They stopped there and stood immobile, with a stillness that betrayed their very nonliving nature. Then, without warning, they turned around and went back into the Pyramid.
“Okay. They do patrols, but they don’t seem to notice us here.”
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“They didn’t seem to bother pursuing us when we escaped,” Vantegaard said. “I think they protect the Pyramid itself, not its surroundings.”
Fontana made a face.
“I’m not risking it anyway. We make our camp here on the border, just inside the forest.”
He turned toward the rear of the raid and raised slightly his voice.
“Setup camp, break out your tents. We’re going to use all available skills to do a remote examination of the setup. You have a scan skill for anything; check what you can find and report to me, Vormacinus or Palacio.”
An hour later, the forest was full of tents, small and large. The advantage of being a moderately high-level Gater was that driving spikes into the ground was trivial, no matter how hard it was packed. Nobody used a hammer for that. So, Birkathane simply thumbed down the tent spikes with her 35 Strength while Vantegaard held everything up. Once they’d dumped their backpacks in it, they wandered around, watching everybody getting ready.
There were two huge military-style camouflage-colored tents, the kind you could house two dozen people under if necessary. These had been set up at the very edge of the clearing because there was not enough room anywhere else, and nobody wanted to start cutting down trees, just in case there was some kind of absurd alarm mechanism monitoring that.
During the whole installation, a number of people came to peek at the Pyramid. You could figure out who was using specific Skills from the fact that they didn’t even bother watching the pyramid directly. These sensor experts often closed their eyes and… probably imaged whatever sixth sense Skill they were using. The Interface provided both an intuitive sense of things and often a more visual one for details at higher levels. Quandocor’s Lay of the Land came with a visual, if extremely blurry and imprecise, map he could call up at will. Vantegaard’s Sense the Leylines even mentioned a map at “higher levels”, which he had yet to reach. So, it wasn’t bizarre to have people making drawings on yellow legal pads and other supports without even looking at their target.
Pairs of skeletal constructs came at irregular intervals on top of the Pyramid. Most of these did some quick patrol around the platform before heading back, but some simply popped up, turned around, and descended back into the pyramid immediately. The only aspect that seemed consistent in their behavior was the pairing of constructs. The shape differed, the patrol differed, but there were always two, never less, never more.
Unfortunately for Vantegaard, the range of his Aetheric Sense was far too short to reach the Pyramid. In fact, he doubted any Aetherist would have the range to do much of anything from the clearing’s border. So, he and Birka simply found a large root to sit on and wait out the preparation time.
“We’re no longer useful,” he sighed.
“Except for yourself,” Birkathane countered. “I’m just a glorified GPS, and we’ve arrived. At least you might get involved again if we have to breach the walls with your Mind over Matter.”
“I wonder if there’s not some thousander with it and a much higher stat. It’s a high-tier Skill; all it takes is getting it later with the stats already high, and you're better than me while leveling it up faster. Last year, I felt special. Those unique Skills made me special. And then people got Mind over Matter from Setup, and Sense is now a Skillstone…”
Birkathane shot him a severe glance.
“Really? That’s what has been bugging you since that auction debacle? Blame population growth. What is unique for fifty thousand people is merely rare for half a million. That Warbound Skill that was supposedly unique, someone already had. I’m sure that fancy Break The World will be found somewhere else one day.”
She leaned into him.
“It’s not about having a unique Skill. It’s having the right Skill in the right place. That’s what you have. That is what makes you – and all of us – heroes.”
“And it got us a front seat for the spectacle,” he admitted.
She laughed softly.
“You liked that metaphor from Quan, did you?”
“Yea. I wonder how negotiations are progressing on his side…”
“I think nobody reported anything new over Com Globe since we were back from Earth.”
“Hurry up and wait.”
“That’s the military, not the police,” she laughed.
After an hour of watching people checking the clearing and its Pyramid, Vantegaard drifted toward the command group. They had pulled some kind of table in front of one of the large tents and were swapping notes and schematics from the various remote-sensing Gaters. Vantegaard wasn’t the only one interested, and a dozen more Gaters were milling around the border of the clearing, hoping to catch juicy hints.
“Okay. You might as well all be useful and pass the word,” Vormacinus finally said.
Fontana finished stacking the sheets and turned toward the curious Gaters.
“Remote detection confirms that we have enemies present and active in the Pyramid. Numbers are stable, which is good. The lowest is 85 Elite, and the highest is 105 Greater Elite, which we had known before. Not much detectable in the type of abilities or anything, but a 105 Greater is not something I’d try to tackle solo when it’s a complete unknown. Too many Skills available to fuck you up. In any case, we’re tackling this as if it was a 200+ raid, not a 100+. Think last year’s Turk raid… okay, not everyone is from Alpha and familiar with what I said.”
“Shelob for those who remember that one,” Vormacinus supplied, and Fontana nodded.
He looked at the dubitative faces of the onlookers. He pointed out toward Vantegaard.
“Not much about the Pyramid itself, even if we already know from him that it’s hollow.”
Palacio added, “We’ve got people with good mapping skills, but the mix of empty holes and corridors and whatnot make the whole thing very confusing from this distance. We’ll need to get closer to obtain a better map. But… well, there seems to be one huge spherical opaque something inside.”
“The Northworld stone globe,” Vantegaard said.
“Probably. I’d love to be able to see what’s inside since it apparently does not register as stone, but that will have to wait, unfortunately,” the raid’s third-in-command said.
“Now, as much as I’d love to start this right now,” Fontana added, “We will camp for the night. Get us all fresh without the risk of Tired debuffs. Since they don’t react to our presence yet, we will start the assault tomorrow morning.”
Vormacinus took over the mini-briefing.
“That’s it, people. Try not to drink or stuff yourselves too much. I want a lean fighting machine ready to roll the first thing after dawn. Now go, shoot.”
The two caught up with Vastragal, who was also on the prowl for news since she was not a member of the inner circle.
“I guess that it’s fine. I mean, always make sure you’re full. Although, with everyone having one Meditation, it’s not as important as actual sleep,” she said. “Unless you have Sleepless or something similar like Late Nighter, nothing can compensate for that.”
“Everyone picked a Meditation Skill?” Vantegaard asked.
“I think we all did. There might be a few from the Beta/Gamma contingent that did not have enough points banked and couldn’t get those before Recessing, but… well, the 75km range that’s been reported for the Locational Interference means they could potentially get it halfway through the trip here.”
“What was Vormacinus talking about? Shelob?”
“One of the famous raids the World Wreckers did last year. You heard about the Turk?”
“A bit. Vasilykulik, when we were coming this way, talked a bit about it after we told him of our loot in Fanduk’s tower.”
“Well, the Turk was probably a textbook example of loot that was way too high for the people who downed it, which probably means it was done by underleveled people. A few people died on that raid, which put a damper on the Alpha raid scene. Not that Vasily had been there, I think; he was an upper Veteran, and the raid was strictly high-thousander-only.”
She sighed.
“Everyone liked the Russian. The only reason he wasn’t first-in-command for Alpha was that he always said ‘no’. Even threatening to ship adulterated vodka to anyone who promoted him.”
“He was a good one. And a weird axe-necromancer build.”
She laughed.
“Don’t judge builds. I mean, you get what the lottery gives you… or at least, you used to.”
“People back in Fanduk thought that their Locational Interference was unique,” Vantegaard noted.
“The Build Maps service is online now. Or at least, it was just before I Respawned. Unless we take ads on social networks, I don’t know how much we can promote,” Vastragal sighed.
“So, Shelob?”
“It was the World Wreckers who found the dungeon with it. What does the name ‘Shelob’ prompt you?”
“Big spider?”
“Big spider, indeed. A 180 Greater Elite, so everyone thought it would be easy.”
“Wrong?”
“Very. Just like the Turk called up additional constructs to his ‘chessboard’ – which was a 9-by-9 one, not a normal chessboard – Shelob had a whole lair of spiders she called upon. It’s a miracle nobody got killed when they fled for their lives.”
“Did anyone call ‘flee you fools?’” Birkathane asked.
Vastragal laughed.
“No, because nobody was stupid enough to make a last stand behind. But they came back and spent two entire days clearing the entire area to make sure there were no lesser spiders left. And even there, they had to tackle a handful of additional spiders people had missed as soon as they started to poke the mother of that brood. I heard it was a close thing.”
“You were not there?” Vantegaard asked.
“No. Despite being a 2100-level Silvergater, I’m not coming to every large raid that happens in Beta. But that’s the idea behind the Shelob argument, I think. That just because you’re tackling rank 100 ‘small’ things doesn’t mean you’re not going to face a rank 200 threat, and you’d better make sure you’re in the clear when you face the final threat.”
“Sensible.”
“The World Wreckers boast of having almost no deaths among their members. Despite the brash appearance of Vormacinus, they’re all, well, real veterans at this. That’s why Fontana and Palacio make him a co-leader.”
“He’s that good then?”
“Very. They pride themselves on recruiting only the best.”
“Well, he seemed to be interested in us, notably after that challenge of his to gain levels fast,” Vantegaard noted.
“He did?”
“Said, I quote, ‘Maybe there will be a place for you’.”
“Looking to switch?” she asked pointedly.
“No. Well, he also said ‘in a couple of years’. For now, I think we’ll wander Northworld looking for Skills. He’ll probably end up disappointed that we might not level up as fast.”
Vastragal pondered the answer.
“Well, the Cartographers always like more explorers. Who knows, maybe this Pyramid will have big surprises, and all our plans will change.”
“With First Contact for four alien species, they probably will,” Vantegaard speculated.
“Oh, by the way, I got a small report with this morning’s Com Globe briefing. Well, it turns out they got a fairly big surprise…”