Edge of the Abyss (Respawn Trials Book #1) LitRPG Series Page 19

  “Why so glum suddenly? I know that I’ve ruined your character, but you can get a new one once you’re back.”

  “Sorry,” he said coldly and tersely. “People are waiting for me.” Denis hung up without saying goodbye and I knew why. To avoid being rude and saying exactly what was on his mind.

  I returned to the Edge of the Abyss and lay for some time, listening to Jeb’s even breathing. Then the fatigue of the last few days took over and I didn’t even notice falling asleep.

  * * *

  The morning started off surprisingly calmly.

  The protective aura surrounding the miner’s hut hadn’t yet disappeared, but the timer in my interface was counting down its last minutes.

  The net over the door was gone.

  Jeb had gotten up first and had already explored the basement (the hatch in the floor was open), finding some usable pottery.

  “Any meat left?” he asked when he noticed that I was awake.

  “Yep, a little,” I gave him the supplies and stepped outside.

  After the frigid darkness of the dungeon, a typical dawn felt incredibly special. I breathed in deeply. Despite everything, I liked this world. I wasn’t regretting drowning in it.

  Dewdrops glistened in the light of the rising sun. A smoky rabbit sneaked past. A squirrel pup sat on a pine branch, glancing at me and holding a bat in its paws. He was getting ready for breakfast. I winked at him. The creature hissed in response, scampered up a couple of branches and stared at me warily, wondering if I was going to steal his prey. Calm down, I don’t hurt little fellows...

  I didn’t want to ruin this moment. I sank down on the rickety porch, thinking. Why were mobs always predators? Even the ones that should have been omnivores or vegetarians? This note of inaccuracy didn’t let me fully relax.

  A strange sound came from nearby, like a muffled clap. Could it be a local teleport, for example, due to someone using a scroll? I pricked up my ears, of course, but the hut’s protection was still active so there was no point in leaping up and pulling out my weapon. Better to keep watch.

  The squirrel pup moved even higher. He was sniffing nervously but not running away.

  A gust of warm wind blew in my face, bringing the smell of the forest.

  Nothing unusual... but I no longer believed in the deceptive calm of this sunny morning.

  The dewdrops darkened for a moment. A shadow was being cast over them!

  Someone invisible was sneaking towards me. Someone silent and deadly. They were circling the clearing, probably trying to find a gap in the defense.

  Clearly an NPC. A player would have immediately figured out what was happening. Oh, the protective aura was about to stop working. There were only seconds left...

  The squirrel pup laid its prey on a fork in the branches. The wings of the bat he had caught hung down like two black tattered rags.

  The animal was spooked by something so he leaped onto the cabin roof and hid among the bark, moss and twigs.

  The radiant morning faded in the next moment, as if there was a sudden solar eclipse.

  A puzzled Jeb came out onto the porch.

  The squirrel rapidly descended, clearly fearful of something and seeking protection. He hid behind Jeb’s leg but curiosity got the better of him. The creature stood up on his hind legs, the front paws clinging onto my companion’s pant leg, and peeked out. All his fur stood on end. I followed the direction of his gaze and felt my breath being knocked out of me. The dead bat left on the tree branch suddenly shifted its wings, either reviving or transforming into the undead.

  The darkness gathered, acquiring a smoky tint and condensing into a supernatural figure.

  The eyes glowed purple and looked at me from within a deep hood.

  How could I describe his appearance? A few steps away, a creature materialized that looked vaguely human. The stranger was dressed in armor made from an unfamiliar dull alloy. He wore a tattered cloak over it, so thin in places that it resembled rags.

  The face was hidden by a haze, with only the eyes burning into me.

  He held a sword and a staff in his hands. Clearly a multiclass player.

  The squirrel squeaked nervously and hid behind the dumbfounded Jeb. The bat didn’t just come alive but grew noticeably larger. It circled around us through the darkness, as if absorbing it.

  The stranger’s frame was slowly revealed,

  Gray_Talg. Warrior of the Abyss. Level 92.

  A player, judging by the nickname!

  “All the conditions have been met,” he stated hollowly, looking at me like I was a bug. He ignored Jeb completely.

  What conditions?

  I frantically thought of what might have attracted his attention. Was it the portal activation?

  “Have you come to receive a quest?” he spoke in an even, expressionless voice.

  So that’s what it was! I had received Level 30 a day ago. Using 50% of realism... Most of the Dark players started out in exactly the same way. They reached the necessary development threshold and made their way here, to the sinister forest in the foothills, to receive a coveted quest...

  I didn’t understand. How could players issue quests? He spoke strangely too, using clichéd phrases as if he was an NPC. What a bizarre situation.

  “The first test,” Gray_Talg interpreted my confusion in his own way and threw up the arm with the staff, pointing at Jeb, “Is to kill him!”

  Yeah, sure thing... What a shame we hadn’t changed the anchor point. We’d have to start all over again in the catacombs of the Dark Frontier.

  “I don’t need a Dark aura. My friend and I are traveling and just stopped here for the night.”

  “Think of what you are rejecting! Look!” Talg interrupted me angrily. The dense murk hiding his features became distorted. He abruptly raised his sword, and black flames enveloped the blade, cutting through the thicket, tree branches, bushes and moss — everything turned to ashes, creating an elongated bare patch.

  The blow was aimed to the side and yet my Life bar dropped by a quarter for no obvious reason!

  …

  You are under the influence of the Aura of the Abyss. Random damage to all living things. The effect radius depends on the level of the aura holder.

  …

  The ground buckled suddenly. The yellowish skeleton of a long-dead animal shook off the adhering sandy loam, eyed me chillingly with its empty sockets, and, staggering, rose to its full height.

  …

  Wolf skeleton. Raised from oblivion by the Aura of the Abyss.

  …

  “I’m still not interested,” I said with difficulty. My mouth went dry. The darkness seemed tenacious, inhibiting my movements. It wasn’t hard to guess the next question...

  “Why do you refuse to serve the Shadows?”

  “I’ve been to the Deadly Crag. I saw those crazed creatures.”

  “Scum of past wars!” Talg spoke scornfully, expressing no surprise at my words. “The trust of real Shadows must be earned.”

  “By killing at their whim?”

  His aura twisted again as if the Warrior of the Abyss could barely control his rage.

  “Shame that I am bound by my task. Yet we will meet again,” he glared at me with disdain, then turned and walked away.

  The swirling plumes of darkness withdrew after him.

  * * *

  “Ugh,” Jeb sank down on the porch of the hut in exhaustion. “He didn’t touch us!”

  The day grew brighter around us and the air regained its transparency but the trail left behind by the creepy visitor was clearly visible: dead leaves, a deathly silence with no birdsong, and the grass turning a strange purple shade. The morning air now chilled me to the bone.

  The wolf skeleton crumbled to dust as soon as the sun’s rays touched it. This wasn’t new but was worth remembering.

  I sat down on the porch as well and thought hard.

  The mysterious Shadows clearly needed allies among the players. At first glance, it seemed t
hat the classical battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘light’ and ‘dark’ was taking place in the Edge of the Abyss, yet I suspected that everything was much more complicated. The high level of realism changed the essence of perception, leaving an indelible mark on the soul and mind. Darkness nestled mainly inside us. This wasn’t a metaphor, given the full immersion in the game reality. It wasn’t possible to play as a Dark character here just for fun and then come back the next day as a Warrior of Light. Just like in real life, every action subtly altered a person inside. Yes, you could mess up and re-create a character, but it wouldn’t change your essence.

  I would bet anything that Gray_Talg was a player irreversibly changed by this virtual reality after completing many Dark quests.

  Before this, I couldn’t understand how in-game events could so easily leak into the real world. Now things were clearer. The sensory realism equalized the two worlds. Many users of the Edge of the Abyss could no longer distinguish between the realities and behaved the same both here and there. They easily agreed to extreme measures without questioning the means needed to achieve the goal, anything to remove the obstacle and to snatch victory…

  Who were these Shadows? What were they trying to achieve by manipulating the players?

  While I was thinking, the squirrel pup, having successfully survived the frightening events, ran to the middle of the clearing, sniffed the ground, then turned and looked at Jeb and I in bewilderment.

  He clearly didn’t like the wilted purple grass. An unpleasant smell, like the stench of decay, emanated from it.

  With a couple of leaps, the animal was back at the hut.

  “Hey, buddy, did you get scared?”

  The squirrel climbed onto Jeb’s lap. He had an adorable face and his eyes glittered like onyx beads, as if saying, ‘don’t drive me away, okay?’

  “What use will you be?” I grumbled, slowly recovering from the unexpected events. I had acted calmly but had been sure that the Warrior of the Abyss would send us into respawn. And it would be back to that hateful dungeon, now probably full of Dark players looking for us.

  “Dan, let’s take him with us!”

  “It’s an ordinary NPC, not even a pet.”

  “So what?” Jeb said stubbornly. “He can always run off into the woods if he wants to.”

  “Hey, do what you like. It’s up to you. Right now, we need to decide where to go next. Do we go and look for a working respawn point or return to the portal?”

  “The portal? The wolf pack would certainly be back there by now! We barely survived them last time.”

  “We walk, then?”

  “I saw an overgrown path running down the slope. It’ll take us somewhere.”

  I was inclined to agree with him. The portal was a fast but very risky transportation method. It was impossible to know where it would send us. This way, we had a chance to keep leveling up since Level 30 players reached this place somehow, right? Not all of them, of course.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  “Wait, what about the mine? There’s lots of stuff in the basement, too. Maybe we’ll find something useful?”

  “I don’t want to stay here. I bet the mine is a dungeon. And we don’t need any more junk, you should change your habits.”

  Jeb wasn’t offended but didn’t agree with me either. “I’ll have a look anyway,” he said and went back inside. The squirrel pup followed him.

  “Okay, wait. I’ll help hold the torch, at least.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS DARK, damp and musty in the basement.

  The wavering torchlight revealed snatches of leaning wooden racks. This was where the mining equipment used to be stored. Bundles of wooden handles tied with twine, rusty picks, a broken wheelbarrow, cart wheels, broken pottery... trash, in short. We were wasting our time.

  The squirrel pup was behaving strangely. It seemed to me like he could understood everything we were saying, and was now determined to prove his usefulness, standing still in the middle of the cluttered room and sniffing intensely.

  While Jeber_Arium rattled around the different bits of metal, the animal jumped onto a shelf, tore through the cobwebs with his paw, scratched his claws along the wall and slipped into a narrow crack in the masonry.

  “What a weasel!”

  “Who?” Jeb turned back to me.

  “The little squirrel. He’s found a burrow.”

  “Weasel, huh?” Jeb’s eyes flashed merrily. “I like it! Good name!” he lifted a rusty pick off the floor and began to tap it along the wall, at the spot the squirrel had indicated. “Wow, there’s a hidden cache here!” Jeb exclaimed excitedly, knocking off the layer of clay that someone had used to carefully cover up the hole in the wall. “Hey, get out of the way so I don’t get you by accident!”

  Weasel jumped onto a rotten shelf and sneezed. He looked smug, as if saying, ‘Well, what did I tell you? I’m useful, right?’

  I smiled despite myself. What a cheeky devil. I looked at his frame, thinking of writing an article, but it turned out that there was already a Wiki entry.

  Rock Squirrel. An endangered species found only in the foothills of the Dark Frontier. These creatures have an excellent sense of smell, are smart and possess a rare magical ability to see what is hidden, which helps them to survive and unerringly find caches of food stored for the winter (it is well known that ordinary squirrels often forget where they buried the nut, which helps to preserve forests).

  …

  So that’s how it was?

  “Dan, look!”

  Jeb had removed all the clay and pulled several bricks out of the wall. The first alcove turned out to be fake, but there was something really interesting behind it!

  We immediately opened the small wooden box, darkened with age. In the light of the torch, I saw a handwritten book bound in leather and a set of burins[6].

  We turned the pages with interest. The yellowed parchment contained images of magical symbols and their combinations.

  “Is this valuable?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes!” Jeb nodded energetically. “It must have belonged to the dwarf rune master. These are mainly protective and enhancing symbols, but we can find other books.”

  “Wait, how does it work?”

  “You don’t understand? If you carve runes into wooden supports holding up the mine roof, for example, they will become stronger! A pickaxe with magic symbols engraved on it will split the stone more easily.”

  “So, using these tools, you can make items that increase stats[7] or add magical affixes[8] to normal items?”

  “Yes, but you need a special skill. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

  I took the book and set of instruments and added them to my inventory.

  “Weasel!” Jeb called.

  The animal immediately squeaked in response. The sound came from the depths of a damp room.

  “Well, where are you?” I raised my torch higher.

  “Did you find anything?” Jeb spoke to the squirrel like it was a person. “Dan, there seems to be another cache here!” he exclaimed.

  This time, Weasel was trying to dig a hole in the far corner of the basement.

  “Come on, get out of the way!” I grabbed an old pickaxe and churned up the dirt floor with a few blows. Something jangled. It was a small clay pot, filled to the brim with copper coins.

  “Well done!” Jeb stroked the animal’s fur.

  I looked at his frame and read in surprise.

  Weasel. Level 5.

  “Jeb, did you see that?”

  “Yeah. My interface is now showing him as an NPC companion. A separate tab has appeared! All his characteristics are at baseline, and he has a Level 1 ability to See What is Hidden.”

  * * *

  We thoroughly explored the basement but didn’t find anything else.

  Jeb rewarded Weasel with a piece of boiled rat meat and stated adamantly that he wasn’t going anywhere until he had searched all the buildings of the abandoned
mine. It looked like he was seized with treasure hunting again.

  I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible after the visit of the Warrior of the Abyss since the place was clearly not safe, but I didn’t argue, just warned them not to go into the mine. I then picked up a split dwarf shield, sat down in the shade of the flimsy awning and began to study the book we had found, not forgetting to glance around from time to time.