My third life in the Nether began on Kharinza, by the ruins of the Departed. From there, I teleported straight to Tristad.
The city was safe, with roofs, food and the opportunity to level up. The strategy was obvious: pull one rabbit at a time and kill it with Reflection before Diamond Skin ran out. In between, I could level up everything I’d unlocked, including rank three Resilience.
Resilience rank III reached!
Select a skill progression path:
Path of Equanimity
You completely ignore all damage for the first 3 seconds of battle.
Path of Life
You absorb 1% of damage taken, using it to automatically recover health, mana or your class resource.
Path of Stubbornness
A magical shield surrounds you at the start of the battle with a durability equal to 300% of your mana.
Path of Torment
By choosing the Path of Torment, you willingly refuse reduced pain and save up your experienced pain in a Vessel of Torments, to later transform the contents into free stat points.
Path of Sacrifice
At the start of each battle, you absorb the total health of all your group members, plus a bonus 1% of that total, in order to take all the damage dealt to any ally throughout the battle. However, if you die, the entire group dies.
The paths didn’t replace each other, they added to each other, and
I’d already completed two—Path of Justice and Path of Reflection. The choice was harder than it should be because I didn’t know what to prepare for. The Path of Torment was attractive, since I had to put up with pain in the Nether anyway. On the other hand, full invulnerability at the start of battle wouldn’t hurt against those rabbits. If I managed to quickly level up Resilience (easily done with a few bites from the furious rabbits!), that would give me three and a half minutes of god mode. A legion of flesheating beasts could kill themselves against me in that time—if they all attacked at once, of course. So I chose Path of Equanimity.
A bunch more time passed as I spent my attribute points, pressing pluses on sfrength, agility and endurance—these were the three physical stats I’d decided to level up, banking on survivability and damage. The only problem was that the game dropped me a hundred and eighteen levels for my second death. Logic told me that the penalty was ten percent of the current level. That was hardcore, but the exchange rate suited me; any rabbit would give me between five hundred and seven hundred levels, it was hard to say exactly.
When I was done, I headed to the city gates. I planned to throw my shield to pull rabbits and fight them on the threshold of Tristad.
I was vaguely concerned about whether my absence had been noted yet, and how much time it would take my friends to pull Alex ‘Dangerous Adventure Magnet’ Sheppard from his capsule. But I felt good: not tired, not hungry, inspired by my huge jump in level and excited for the heights I would reach. Even the horrifying and unavoidable pain was only an inconvenience.
I left the bounds of Tristad and looked around, ready to run back at any second. But I should have watched the skies instead of searching for enemies in the grass.
Liberation repelled the first crowd-control effect, blit the second made my body freeze. I don’t know why, but even my undead racial bonus didn’t work.
I started to fall onto my back, the vast blue sky filling my vision, and against it, the shadow of a winged girl hovering in the air:
Beta #9, human, level 301672 Collector Mage
Chapter 6: Nine
THE NUMBERS in the timer for the Chilled debuff were too high to believe. Like all the other numbers in this place. If I calculated right, the stun would last a million minutes, or almost two years.
“I have him, Three,” a graceful female voice said.
“Level?” The second voice sounded fuzzy, as if through a comm amulet.
“One thousand six hundred and ten. You’ll see him for yourself soon. Over and out.”
Beta #9, whose name I decided to shorten to just Beta, flew off toward the Nameless Mountains. Judging by how I was dragged along behind her, she’d attached herself to me with some magical line. Then she seemed to realize that I’d be easy prey for the rabbits that way. The longeared monsters were approaching from all sides like a pack of wolves… No sooner had I remembered them than they appeared. Maybe they caught the scent of blood, or maybe the other rabbits clued them in. Something seemed odd about them, but I couldn’t make them out properly.
Realizing that she risked losing her prize, Beta suddenly beat her ghostly wings and ascended higher, letting me hang in the air. An invisible thread pulled me by the belt. My frozen body didn’t bend, just rocked and bounced as if on a rope.
We flew for a long time, more than an hour. My absence should have been noted in real life long ago. I expected an emergency exit any minute, but nothing happened. I couldn’t talk to Beta, and she stayed silent. I couldn’t see anything except the sky rocking above me with its painted clouds. The sun shone brightly, but not enough to blind; it looked painted on too. Time stood in place, and it seemed there were no weather effects here. At least the terrain objects weren’t sprites.
Why had this world been created? Why wasn’t it switched off? Who was Beta? Why was everything here so high level? It comforted me that this strange player had kidnapped me and not killed me. That meant there was a chance for a dialog. Although, to be honest, none of this boded well for me; only Snowstorm could make
