Somewhere near my three-hundredth death, which meant around four months in, I managed to listen in unnoticed on a conversation between her and Three. Maybe they weren’t even hiding, in the same way high-category citizens don’t notice servants. By then, I’d long ago fallen down to level one. To ensure that I didn’t die my final death, the girl grouped up with me and took me outside to kill a couple of packs of mobs. I got crumbs of experience, but it was enough to send my level skyrocketing up to a few thousand.
Beta complained to her would-be MIT scholarship student that she’d gotten a ‘stubborn donor.’
“I knocked out Liberation, Ghastly Howl and a few other skills that I already have. You know, Stealth, Swimming, garbage like that. Either I’m just unlucky or there’s some catch here…”
“You have an eternity ahead of you, Nine, relax,” Three answered. “Or do you want something specific from him?”
“I need everything, obviously. That’s the whole point. Anyway, the donor is interesting. Probably the most curious of all the ones weve gotten. Second Life, Divine Revelation, Depths Teleportation— some very interesting skills and perks. Especially the second one.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll get them sooner or later. What do you think about Nine-Six and Seven-Two? They serious…?”
From scraps of overheard conversations and rare chats with the closed-off and silent Nine, I managed to learn that the remaining beta testers lived single lives. Surprisingly, Three was the only heterosexual man among them. Nine-Six and Seven-Two were gay. Apart from Nine, there were also two women, and Three was in a relationship with Twelve. Five-Four was his ex, and Nine was his first love.
From what I understood, each of them valued their digital eternal life, so they lived apart and trusted no-one. Three met with Twelve on neutral ground. It made sense after I learned that they all had castles that worked the same way as Nine’s, blocking the skills of uninvited guests and dropping their stats down to a single point. And their mistrust was natural, considering everything they’d been through. The initial hundred beta testers had become six not because of the mobs, but because of feuds, treachery, stabs in the back… and Nine’s fanatical drive to collect abilities. She was responsible for snuffing out life’s flame in far more than one beta tester in the Nether.
I also managed to figure out why none of them had gone insane.
Their digital existence meant that they all had perfect memories, bodies that didn’t age or get sick (not counting debuffs) and minds that stayed sane. Their thinking was always rational, and so was mine.
I was sure I still had a tiny chance to escape. Based on my calculations, I had to spend at least a local year here before I’d be missed and rescued from my capsule. And even if I remained here after the emergency exit, the main ‘me’ would come back and pull me out to the real Dis. How? I didn’t know. I held out hope that Snowstorm would help. Scyth was no ordinary player, after all. The character was enmeshed in the script of the Destroying Plague, and the Sleeping Gods depended on him too.
Nine punished me for my escape attempts. The worst part was that my Resilience was blocked from leveling up while she tortured me, not letting me die. On the other hand, I saw all the Ravagers, which she called Piercers. Nine usually kept them small, around the size of a dog, so they wouldn’t take up too much space. There were nine of them, and I doubted that number was random. They were just as horrifying and warped as all the creatures there. Nine said they were all tamed with a special talent. Each Piercer had the Smoldering skill, which both temporarily served as a killing aura and gave the ability to absorb experience from other beings.
Once, after respawning yet again, my stomach clenched as I braced for more pain and a new death, but Beta just nodded at me to follow her. As she walked, she seemed to recall something and handed me some legendary leather pants, boots and an epic silk shirt.
“Get dressed. You don’t look too smart.”
Puzzled, I did what she asked and we started moving again. We headed out to Beta’s beautiful garden in the castle grounds.
“Want a drink?” she asked, stopping in a small glade surrounded by gardens filled with fantastical flowers.
I didn’t refuse. The girl magicked up a dining table, materialized a bottle of brandy and some cups out of thin air, invited me to sit.
“Eat,” she said, filling the glasses serenely.
When we finished the brandy, she materialized a bottle of wine, and not common quality, but legendary. It added three points to charisma.
We sat peacefully talking for a few hours and both got pretty drunk. The wine made us feel so charming and charismatic. The chink really did untie tongues and bring people closer together.
Beta opened up and told me how the Greater Rift works. As it turned out, she went to grind Smoldering Nether Shards for days on end without breaks.
“One Greater Rift costs one hundred million shards,” she said, slurring her words a little. “Some dumb game mechanic makes ’em drop only if the mob is the same level or higher than you, so they’re tough to get. At least the other betas help out—they all wanna get outta here. When we have the amount we need, we all meet up, I take the shards and I make a Greater Rift. First we put some ordinary mobs through it. We just pull ’em to the rift and throw ’em in. After the second wave, I send the Piercer through, giving it a command to kill everything it meets. When it lands, it drops to level one, but thanks to our mobs and
