The Reapers (The Neuro 3) Read online

  The Reapers

  a novel

  by Andrei Livadny

  The Neuro

  Book#3

  Magic Dome Books

  The Neuro

  Book # 3: The Reapers

  Copyright © Andrei Livadny 2018

  Cover Art © Vladimir Manyukhin 2018

  English translation copyright © Irene and Neil P. Woodhead 2018

  Editor: Zach Lewis

  Published by Magic Dome Books, 2018

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-80-88231-47-9

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  by Andrei Livadny:

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  The Neuro LitRPG Series

  by Andrei Livadny:

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  by Michael Atamanov:

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  Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  AGRION MARKET SQUARE was uncrowded. Not many players online today. Only the NPCs continued living their own computer-generated lives.

  For them it was business as usual: merchants praising their wares, a crooked old lady shuffling her feet past the swordsmiths’ row. She leaned heavily on her staff and mumbled something to herself as she cast watchful glances around in search for any newbs whom she might reward with a social quest for their penny’s worth of alms.

  A gust of wind raised twisters of dust, stripping a lone tree of an armful of yellow autumn leaves which floated swirling onto the cobblestones.

  Business as usual indeed, had it not been for the cold in my chest and the group of high level riders who’d just dismounted by the tavern.

  The city patrol seemed quite alarmed by their arrival. The guards officer and two lancers hovered nearby, casting sideways glances at the tired warriors and their lathering horses. The tavern keeper hurried to greet them.

  I didn’t know any of the warriors in the group apart from their leader Friedrich White, Enea’s father. Their gear was worthy of note: it lacked the usual abundance of useless elements so typical of fantasy armor. Normally, a group of high-level warriors can be quite a motley bunch as each player strives to stand out in the crowd as much as their wallets and Strength numbers allow them. Especially Strength numbers. If a player’s stats permit them to lug around five hundred pounds of fancily decorated metal, that’s exactly what he or she will do.

  Still, this group’s minimalistic and practical brigandine armor and chainmail were also remarkable in their own way. The fabric cotta dress which was meant to protect the armor plates from the sun, dirt and rain, hung in tatters. It looked like the group had had to fight their way here.

  All these seemingly insignificant details began to fall into a picture, confirming the truth of what White had just told me. The minimalistic practicality of the group’s gear must have had something to do with the neuroimplant’s peculiar nature.

  So this hadn’t been a nightmare, after all. Enea and I had indeed visited the very kernel of the experiment carried out by Infosystems Corporation. Our minds must have collapsed, unable to sustain the information overload.

  No. I refused to believe it. Agrion looked the same as normal. And as for Enea’s father, he must have hired someone to level up for him. That way he could have made the Top 100 within a mere couple of days.

  Why would he lie to me, then, saying that it had been several years since we’d last met? He treasured his daughter and wouldn’t have toyed with her respect so stupidly.

  The cold in my chest kept growing. I needed a definite answer. I wanted clear-cut evidence.

  The guards’ captain... I didn’t know him. When had they replaced the old one?

  The old lady hobbled past the guards. Normally she never pays any attention to NPCs. She’s only interested in newbie players. This time, however, she stopped.

  The officer seemed to have expected it. He leaned toward the woman and handed her a small object wrapped in a piece of cloth, then nodded at the alchemists’ row.

  Without saying a word, she turned round and shuffled off toward it.

  There was only one buyer in the alchemists’ row, a level-92 rogue. His high-level Veil of Secrecy wouldn’t let me read his nickname, but his avatar looked familiar.

  Well, well, well. If that’s not Heilig! The cheeky PK with whom I’d already crossed swords twice.

  Last time we’d met was only a few days ago, or so I remembered. Then he’d been level 35.

  I headed toward him, overtaking the old lady on my way.

  “Hi. Looking for new potions?” I asked just to attract his attention.

  He gave me a lopsided grin. “Alexatis. You owe me, remember?”

  Our level gap was enormous now. This may be a safe zone but he was too vindictive to miss his chance.

  I highjacked the situation by playing on his greed. “So how about the cargonite? Two hundred pounds, wasn’t it? Are you still looking for it?”

  He appeared interested enough to suppress his animosity. “We’re generous today, aren’t we? Where did you disappear to? They closed your castle and shut down the entire sector, why? Yeah, they did open some sort of mirror but it was BS. You weren’t there, anyway.”

  “Why, were you looking for me?”

  “What do you think? The Ravens weren’t happy with you, were they? Your scuffle cost me very dearly. And the next day the admins changed my login location!”

  “You don’t mean it! What, just like that?”

  “Well, they did send me a letter. Like, ‘due to technical difficulties, we were forced to temporarily close the Agrion cluster. We apologize for the inconvenience’. Yeah right! What happened to your clan, then? And the Ravens? You both disappeared off the radars. I find it weird.”

  “You could say that. One question: do you log in via your implant?”

  He shrugged and spat at his feet. “How else do you want me to log in? You’re worse than a noob sometimes. The questions you ask...”

  What a relief.

  The uncertainty of the last few hours was gone. Enea and I were alive and back in the Crystal Sphere. That was the main thing. The rest we could sort out later.

  �
��So whassup? Are you gonna pay up?” he grew impatient, assuming his invincibility. Even if I didn’t give him cargonite, at least he’d get even with me and stealth out like he must have done many times in the past.

  Before I could reply, the old lady had finally caught up with us,

  “Good sir, spare a trifle for a poor woman,” she addressed Heilig.

  “Piss off, bitch. Do you think I’m a noob to be interested in social quests?”

  The woman looked visibly upset. She stopped and leaned on her staff as if catching her breath. “No one wants to help me,” she complained weakly. “What if they’re right? Do I really need this kind of life? Do I?”

  She whipped out a dagger from her rags and buried it in Heilig’s throat in one practiced, powerful thrust.

  * * *

  What happened next was surreal.

  The already-familiar bluish haze comprised of neurograms poured out of Heilig’s slit throat, breaking into separate puffs which reached out for the old lady, the alchemist vendor and a few more NPCs who had chanced nearby.

  “A Reaper!” one of White’s riders thundered in, then flung his heavy pike at her.

  The pike pinned the old woman to the vendor’s stall. Once again the murky haze poured forth: the bluish cloud of neurograms containing the identity of the disembodied PK player. The cloud fell into separate strata, groping for the nearby NPCs and pouring into their transfixed bodies.

  A noisy murder of crows took to the wing from the crenels of the city wall. Was it my imagination or had I noticed the hunched outlines of crossbowmen on the walls?

  The spine-chilling glitch in gameplay was rapidly snowballing into an uncontrollable event.

  The marketplace dissolved into panic. Vendors, buyers, passersby and idle onlookers — they all scattered in every direction, pushing each other and knocking over the stalls. They separated me from Enea who was still standing next to her father on the steps of the city hall.

  Old Friedrich White wasn’t a slouch though. He gave his shield to his daughter and bared his sword, pointing it at the guards’ captain,

  “A Harvester!”

  In the meantime, the NPCs unlucky enough to have been infected with Heilig’s neurograms began to recover from their stupor. Heilig had never been among the cream of humanity to begin with. No points for guessing what kinds of thoughts had possessed them once the remains of that unrepentant PK’s identity had altered their behavioral models.

  Agrion was a starting location always swarming with low-level players, even in off-peak times. None of them seemed to be affected by the panic. They looked around curiously, apparently believing the tragic events to be a mere glitch.

  An NPC greengrocer’s name tag blinked. A new icon appeared in it: a pictogram of a blood-red skull.

  “Watch out!” I shouted.

  The greengrocer barged into a swordsmith’s stall, grabbed a morning star mace and swung it mercilessly at a petite wizard girl who’d chanced to be next to him.

  Other players were even less lucky. In several more places, the ominous blue haze rose into the air.

  The city guards, however, chose to ignore the unfolding mayhem. With the new Reapers’ support, they threw themselves onto the warrior who’d hurled his pike.

  In compliance with gameplay, his name tag had turned fiery red. Now it was everyone’s duty to kill him, sending him back to his respawn point and stripping him of his levels and expensive gear. The marketplace was a safe zone and the old woman was a quest NPC. Attacking her had been a very unhealthy idea. Her age and appearance didn’t matter.

  “Alex, go away!” Enea’s father shouted, fighting three guards whose levels were on a par with his own.

  Now I could see: he’d leveled up all by himself. The neuroimplant radically changed the entire fight pattern, and I knew this better than anybody else.

  He was actually a great fighter. He’d dropped his shield and used a two-handed grip on his sword, increasing both impact and damage. Without parrying the lancers’ attacks, he kept dodging their sharp thrusting blows with remarkable cool.

  One of the guards had lost his patience and flung himself onto him, commencing a well-practiced combo. Not that it helped him much: Friedrich White sliced through the man’s spear in one calculated motion, then shouldered his opponent onto the wide steps. The guard lost his balance and came rolling back down.

  The two others stepped back, taking cover behind their shields, but White’s sword drew a wide arc through the air, throwing both off balance and forcing them to weaken their defenses.

  I froze with bated breath, awaiting a coup de grace, but no: White had second-guessed their counterattack and recoiled just in time, so that their spearheads barely grazed his armor. Then he dealt one last powerful slashing blow.

  The guards’ bodies rolled down the steps of the city hall.

  “The crossbowmen!” Enea shouted.

  White reacted instantly. Picking up the shield left behind by one of the lancers, he dropped on one knee. The heavy bolts thudded into the shield’s wood right through its thick rough leather.

  “Leave!” he said to his daughter in a muffled voice. “Go inside!”

  My interface blinked with a new message,

  Friedrich White has invited you to join his group.

  As soon as I clicked Accept, the battle chat came to life,

  Crossbowmen on the wall! A Harvester in the square! Finish off the guards and wait for my orders! Alex, wake up! Get out of there ASAP!

  Only now had I noticed the change in the guards’ captain. I could barely recognize him. He’d grown considerably taller and broader. His eyes glowed with a dark fire. His tarnished armor was dropping flakes of oxidation as if it had been reborn in some invisible furnace.

  Harvester. Level 200

  By now, the market square was almost deserted. The crossbowmen continued to shoot, this time targeting those of the NPCs who’d accidentally absorbed some of the killed players’ neurograms. They eliminated them mercilessly and efficiently.

  But why?

  The answer was not long in coming. The familiar bluish haze drifted low over the ground. Confidently the Harvester stepped into it. The murky haze heaved and reached out for him, enveloping his body in its swirls like a slow, unhurried tornado.

  You’re witnessing neurogram absorption.

  Short but pretty clear. The Harvester was ingesting fragments of the dead players’ identities.

  The horror of it was in the fact that this manner of death had caused his victims to die in both worlds.

  There was no way we could stop him. I could only guess at the mechanisms behind this process. By now, the bluish haze had enveloped him completely, permeating his armor. With his level 200, there was precious little we could do to stop this process even if we attacked him all at once.

  The rattling of weapons had died away. White’s warriors had already disposed of the guards. The local NPCs had made themselves scarce. The tavern keeper alone was still standing by his front door like a pillar of salt, bug-eyed, his white-knuckled fingers locked over the wooden banister.

  Just by chance, I happened to be the only one left in the square. I secreted myself behind the upended stalls, watching the Harvester while keeping a cautious eye on the crossbowmen on the city walls.

  There were about ten of them. They behaved weird to say the least: now that they’d stopped shooting, they stood up peering at us through the gaps between the crenels with greedy, insane eyes. Their tags contained an icon of some buff unknown to me.

  The Harvester exuded a wave of heat. His charred armor began to flicker. His face was distorted, his lips cracked, his burnt hair crumbling to ashes.

  The bluish mist had all but disappeared as he’d absorbed most of it by now. Only a few faint wisps of it still swirled around his sinister figure. The vendors’ upended wooden crates heaped around him smoldering, about to catch fire.

  Suddenly his body arched in a spasm. His skin rippled with interference. His level n
umbers began to change at random as did his appearance while he was consumed by a chain of metamorphoses.

  An old man. A girl wizard. A young warrior. A spice vendor. The Harvester’s face now resembled molten wax which some crazy sculptor was molding into grotesque masks, crumpling them and starting anew.

  “Now!” White’s snapped order singed my nerves.

  Was he crazy?

  Like an uncoiling spring, his words launched the five dark knights into the Harvester’s path.

  A defective mob. That’s how the Corporation workers used to describe them.

  But those I’d seen before were known as Reapers. And this one appeared infinitely more powerful than any of them. A Harvester? What kind of new sick monster was this?

  The knights knew what they were doing. Their expertise wasn’t limited to martial arts. They lashed out at the crossbowmen with a Chain of Lightning while showering the Harvester with poisoned arrows, sending his damage-taken counter into a spin. Predatory vines broke through the cobblestones under his feet, entwining them in their grip. The knights changed their weapons on the run as they surrounded him.

  In the meantime, the Harvester’s random change of stats had logically led to his drop in levels. By absorbing the identities of low-level players, he’d lost his unique abilities, rapidly becoming weaker and slower. The game engine had recalculated his characteristics, replacing the question marks in his tag with the number 98. His Life bar plummeted.

  Still, the experienced warriors weren’t fooled by their now seemingly easy prey. They hadn’t changed their tactics.

  Two of them, armed with heavy shields and long steel-shafted pikes, carried out a series of powerful attacks, stripping the Harvester of half his hp, then immediately switched back on the defensive, blocking his response blows.