Damn it. Crafts were locked too. I threw it all back in and fell onto my back, staring up into the sky. I could look straight at the sun without it affecting my eyes here. I’d never seen any birds. Maybe flying mobs didn’t exist in the beta version? I lay there a while and went through my inventory, pulling out each piece of gear and trying to think of what I could do with it. Out of sheer desperation, I lit a fire and tried to cook something, anything. Half my expensive ingredients burnt away fruitlessly.
I put the pan and cook’s hat into my bag, pulled out some Explosive Lollipops. I thoughtfully rolled them in my hand—I counted eleven—and put one in my mouth.
You ate an Explosive Lollipop.
Random buff received: you can walk through walls for 30 seconds!
Not what I needed. Although… I jumped up, dropped the lollipops and rushed to the castle. Clenching internally, I ran headlong into a wall, and as I made contact with the stone, I felt my skin melt into it… Twenty seconds… I dashed through the walls to the far corner of the palace, to the vault, not knowing wiiat I might find there, but hoping for something good. Ten seconds… I wasn’t going to make it. The castle was huge, and I’d covered only half of it. Five seconds… I could see the huge adamantite door of the vault, just ten yards away…
No! I didn’t make it. The lollipop buff ended just as I emerged from a wall. Phew. It was a good thing I didn’t get stuck in the textures and die.
I wandered the corridors an eventually reached some mannequins decked with equipment. Beta didn’t keep anything special there. She probably hid the best items in the vault, or maybe they just hadn’t deemed it necessary to add many items to the beta version. After all, the testers were mainly supposed to be testing playability and realism, finding bugs… All the same, I took a few full sets of equipment, just to get back at Nine somehow. I couldn’t equip any of it: Pacified prevented me from meeting the requirements. A Herald at level six hundred and two, with stats all equal to one. Damn it.
I went back to where I dropped some of the Explosive Lollipops and kept experimenting. I got an Insane Joy debuff and spent half a minute laughing like a madman. Gigantism tripled my size, but my stats remained the same. Bubblehead, Underwater Breathing, Loudspeaker Voice… The names of the lollipop effects spoke for themselves. I was afraid my head would explode. It swelled up so big that you could see me over the walls—or at least top of my head. The last lollipop turned me into a chicken. All my curses melded into just ‘cluck-cluck-cluck.’
All that experimenting took three hours. I decided I’d wait until closer to Nine’s return before I broke out, so I wouldn’t be tortured long if I ran into a Living Sieve. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway.
I wandered the castle grounds, watched the Lava Drakes for a while, held at the bottom of a pit by an enchanted fire-resistant chain. I dropped their level with Balancer and tried to kill them with arrows. I missed.
The clock was ticking. I was already starting to regret that I’d set the emergency quit timer for twelve hours. This was a drag.
Kicking stones in idle melancholy, I went back to where I’d been experimenting. I was somehow attached to the place. I picked a blade of grass, put it between my teeth and laid down on my back again. I kept lying there until the air clapped in the castle yard. Nine had returned. I didn’t bother getting up. Why rush it? She’d find me.
I just turned my head toward her—and saw it. A dropped lollipop. A shiny, greenish ball with a white spiral flowing across its surface. I’d missed it because it had rolled under the long leaf of a tropical creeper. I stretched out my hand, picked up the lollipop and put it in my mouth. An explosion of acid sweetness engulfed my taste buds, the sky went hazy, and then…
You ate an Explosive Lollipop.
Random buff received: you re lighter than air for 30 seconds! Get your Gnomish Parachute Cloak ready. The fall will be long!
With the speed of a balloon filled with helium, I began to ascend. The fortress w^all rushed by me, quickly disappearing below. Floundering in the air, I saw Nine walking through the fortress yard to the site of my death. She wasn’t looking up yet.
There was no wind in this world, so I wasn’t carried off to the side like I’d hoped. Soon the tiny figure that was Beta began to get closer. I was around five hundred yards above her. Spreading my arms, I took a stable position lying on my stomach and studied the surroundings from a bird’s-eye view.
“How did you do that?” Beta’s voice was as clear as if she were next to me. “You hid Levitation or Flight from Three’s scan? But then why didn’t you fly before? Strange…”
My flight slowed. Stretching out a hand, Beta began to pull me toward her. The next second I realized I was looking at the wrong thing! All the castle debuffs were gone! My abilities were active!
Without a second thought, I hit Depths Teleportation to Kharinza. A storm of emotions filled me for five heartbeats, from fear that the cast would be interrupted to premature excitement. I closed my eyes, counted the seconds.
“What are you doing?” Beta asked, a note of surprise and alarm in her voice. “Stop tha…”
First I felt the ground beneath me and caught the tangv scent of wet earth. Then I opened my eyes. And saw Kharinza.
The first thing I did was change my respawn location. I didn’t care if I died as long as the local sadists didn’t find me. I had
