Volper Read online

  Attention! You’ve entered the spontaneously formed dungeon "The Lair of the Rats". This dungeon is designed for a group of players from level two to four.

  Attention! You’re entering the dungeon alone. In case you complete the dungeon for the first time and do so by yourself, the reward will be increased.

  Holy Christ! What have I done?! I went into a dungeon and didn’t even notice it. After all, there had been no barriers or other ways to restrict a player’s access to the dungeon. Not only that, but there haven’t been any barriers to prevent others from following me inside! What a marvelous bit of chaos. Okay, let's check the new list. Yeah, I’d gotten the skill of silent movement, and then the knife one in the battle with the first group of rats, judging by the time I got it. Hmm ... and this looks like the description I got when I saw those weird tentacles:

  Attention! You have discovered a creature that is not in the database; the classification of the creature is not available, and the calculation of the damage is not possible. We recommend that you provide a record of the neurointerface to the research center of any outpost. If you provide a sample of the creature as well, the reward will increase significantly.

  Attention! An unknown creature has blocked your access to one part of the level. Clearing this part is optional.

  Attention! If you clear the blocked part of the level, the reward will be increased.

  So, what could I even say to that? Nothing! At first, the system says "you don’t need to go there!", and then maliciously adds "but there are delicious cookies in there if you do." The following message also piqued my interest:

  Attention! You’ve discovered a safe zone. By blocking the door to the technical room, you’ve made it so you can rest without worrying about your safety. The time spent in the safe zone is not counted as the time it took you to go through the dungeon.

  I guess I could take less precautions with the rooms, then. At least one thing is good about all of this: I can stay here for as long as I like, without worrying about time running out, which means I can take an hour long nap to knock the fatigue meter down to zero and continue clearing the dungeon. I quickly looked through the rest of the system messages, which were filled with alerts about the killings, my money, and raising my skills, In a word, nothing more interested me. I finished my ration, washed it down with water from a jar and, setting an alarm in the neurointerface, I climbed into the sleeping bag to forget about everything. Just before the moment I fell asleep, I thought about how the messages were somehow wrong about the tentacles, but I ignored it, and plunged myself into the abyss of nothingness called sleep.

  I woke up with a vile squeaking in my head. I turned off my alarm and got out of the sleeping bag. Having a bite of my dry ration and handling all the ammunition, I was ready to continue clearing the dungeon. I glanced once again at the room in which I’d been resting, in order not to forget anything. Not finding anything important, I went out into the corridor. Looking at the map, I moved further into the unexplored parts of this labyrinth.

  After about an hour of constantly shooting the local “inhabitants,” I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Though it sounds ambiguous and metaphorical, I meant that quite literally. Turning off the headlight, I continued walking in a crouch. The tunnel led me to a large room where all the communications converged. The room had three tiers going upwards, with a multitude of transitions and bridges leading to various assemblies, all of it quite incomprehensible to me. Well, I'm not a technician; I can only tell a bomb apart from a peaceful device ... Although, to be honest, it's not always possible for me to find a way to do even that. The center of the hall was empty: it was on the first tier, on the edge of which I was right now.

  Along the walls were various large devices, to which the wires and pipes that had accompanied me all the way through this labyrinth led. On the opposite side of me there was a stirring mountain, six meters high, consisting of rats. Apparently, I’d come across the boss of the dungeon. It looks like the rats had been waiting for me here. They had extraordinary attributes and some petty tricks besides, so it would be a real fight.

  From my right came the squeak of a rat, and I, reflexively turning around, cut it off with a short thrust from of one of the knives. The realization of what a stupid thing I’d just done made me turn my head abruptly toward the mountain of rats on the opposite side of the room. The whole crouching mass froze, glancing in my direction with a lot of beady eyes and, a moment later, issuing a many-voiced squeaking, this mountain descended like an avalanche, bringing an unstoppable rat river in my direction.

  - “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” – I screamed, retreating into the depths of the tunnel, while shooting the flood of rats with lead bullets.

  Well, is this why everything in this game has been going ass-backwards for me from the very start? It seems that I’d relaxed while being in retirement and weaned myself away from the constant tension that had kept my body and mind alert and alive before. Step by step, I retreated deeper into the darkness, without skimping on the ammo I was using on the rats. Aiming my shots was out of the question. With my right hand, pressing the Corsair to my hip, I just fired randomly, holding the trigger down. At the same time, after switching the empty magazine cases out with the new ones, I would simply leave the empty ones on the floor. I had barely enough time to reload, although the magazines could do about seven or eight seconds of continuous fire.

  But some of the rats overtook their brethren, running through the pipes, trying to reach my throat with a jump, so they forced me to protect myself against their sharp teeth using my left hand, and then I’d finish off those little motherfuckers by hitting them against the concrete wall. It was a massacre for them. Also, my movement was slowed down further by the rare, solo rat combatants, which would break through a flurry of fire and try to cling to my feet. After the third magazine case, a light smoke began to come out of the Corsair, after the sixth, it was already so hot that light was coming from the gun, which lit up the darkness of the passage into which I had retreated.

  I loaded the last magazine case and, being hardly able to hear anything because of the wounds I’d suffered, I unbuckled the belt of the submachine gun, so that when the magazine was spent, I could quickly drop the Corsair and, finding the handle of the gun, pull it out of its holster. At this point, my fighting friend, unfortunately, let me down, and didn’t fire. Well, these guns weren’t designed for such intense use. This isn’t a machine gun, nitwit, I thought to myself. Having pulled out the second pistol with my free hand, I gripped it in both hands and blindly fired bullets without pausing, shooting at the rats about two meters ahead of me, according to the map.

  Just a few meters behind me there was a technical room, where I had a chance to find cover, but almost immediately, a blow to the body knocked me off my feet. Due to the impact, I dropped both guns and was already lying on the ground, feeling the sharp teeth of the rats digging into my limbs. Turning away, I took out the knife and began to stab and cut, without knowing where I was heading. I don’t even know how long I waved the knife around, but at some point, I realized that I was no longer being gnawed on.

  I didn’t feel my legs and my left hand, only the right hand, with the knife still in it, remained active. I was crawling, overcoming the pain, with only a single hand still functioning. Those last few meters seemed to me like a mile-long obstacle course. I think I lost consciousness a few times while I was crawling, because the journey felt like an eternity, with only periodic flashes of consciousness. And so I was crawling, clenching my teeth. Then I tried to lock the door behind me, but in the end, I simply closed it by pushing against it with my body weight. Another period of consciousness came to me and I started trying to put a bandage on my wounds. Then I lost consciousness, and plunged into the darkness, leaving me one-on-one with the ghosts of my past.

  **************************************************************

  After taking Babay behind the tree, I laid his head on the roots, and sat beside hi
m, glancing at the bushes through which we’d come here. We had been chased for almost a full 24 hours, and in the last hour and a half, the pursuers were nowhere to be found. I hoped they’d lost our tracks. Babay was in a bad way. Four hours ago, he’d taken a plasma charge to the stomach, which had burned through his suit and given him a serious wound. In spite of everything, I tried to get him to my people. He wasn’t just my partner; he’d taught me everything I knew. Long ago, he’d taken a completely green fighter under his care and, more than once, had saved me from various hellish situations. Now he needed my help, and whatever I had to do, I would definitely get him out.

  -"Falcon ..." - he began intermittently.

  -"Don’t worry, Babay, another three hours, or maybe four, and I'll get you to our ..."

  -"Shut up ... It's hard for me ... to speak ..." - he interrupted me, squeezing out every word with difficulty. "More ... I can’t ... survive ... With me ... You won’t get far ..." After a minute’s pause, breathing heavily, he continued. – “Information ... You have to ... send ... You know ... Rules ... Help ... I cannot ...”.

  After hearing him say those words, with a quiet hiss, the armored plates disconnected from his helmet and moved down, making it possible to remove the helmet from his head. But it wasn’t necessary to remove it, he’d asked for something completely different, but I couldn’t make myself... Yes, I fully understood the importance of the information we had on us, and I knew the fucking rule about preserving it, written in tons of blood. But I couldn’t do that to my friend. Babay was like a father to me.

  "Get on with it!... Please ..."

  And I made up my mind! I took out a knife, I thrust it into his neck, cutting the larynx and severing the vertebrae. A quick death, that's what Babay had asked me for. It's only in romanticized stories that an intelligence agency does not give up on its members; in real life, everything’s completely different.

  "May you rest in peace, my old friend." People like you never truly die, they just return to heaven, waiting for their next re-birth.

  With a heavy heart, I turned away and crawled to the point designated for rendezvousing with the evacuation team. Five minutes later, there was a small explosion - it was the elimination system sewn into our outfit, which, in case of death, was triggered by a timer, provided that there were no friendly targets in the blast zone. Then, when I returned to the base, I began to drink a lot. I drank for almost a week, but even the unit commander stayed silent about it. A month later, a reward came for Babay; he’d been awarded a crystal star posthumously.

  CHAPTER VI: WORSE THINGS CAN HAPPEN… SOMETIMES

  To my surprise, I woke up in the same room, feeling hungry and thirsty. My injured limbs ached badly and I couldn’t move them. Looking around in the interface, I found that my life bar had just 14 units left. But the thirst and hunger meters were completely full, and the fatigue level was frozen at the half-way point, and then, right in front of my eyes, it increased by one more point. Turning on the lantern, I pulled up my backpack, which was almost torn apart beside me. I took out a ration and ate it ferociously, swallowing pieces practically without chewing them. Having dealt with my hunger, I poured almost a whole jar of water down my throat. I felt relieved and decided to look around.

  I was coated all over in hemostatic powder, which had come from the bandages that I’d used to try to stop my bleeding. My legs and left arm were wrapped in several layers, with the bandages holding on precariously. I was torn up, and surprised that I’d managed to survive. I wonder how? To get an answer to this question, I looked first at the logs, but as usual, there was only statistical data of the damage dealt and received, plus the info about the experience I’d accrued. I had to switch to system messages. They were much more interesting.

  Attention! Your left arm is injured. The mobility of the limb is reduced until it is once more fully restored.

  Attention! Your right foot suffered a trauma. Speed and load capacity are reduced until the limb is fully recovered.

  Attention! Your left leg is injured. Speed and load capacity are reduced until the limb is fully recovered.

  Attention! You are at death's door. You must get first aid, otherwise you will die.

  Attention! You were able to stop the bleeding. The loss of health has been stopped.

  Congratulations! You managed to survive with only one unit of health remaining.

  Reward: You’ve unlocked the ability of the neurointerface to stimulate the regeneration of your cells.

  Congratulations! You’ve received the "Between life and death" achievement.

  Conditions: Survive with your life total being equal to one unit, without any assistance.

  Reward: Obtaining Regeneration Skills.

  Reward: an award pin, visible to all owners of the neurointerface. The display mode is enabled in the system settings.

  Attention! The level of thirst is full. Have something to drink; otherwise, your health will start to deteriorate.

  Attention! The level of hunger is full. Eat up; otherwise, otherwise, your health will start to deteriorate.

  Attention! Regeneration has stopped.

  Reason: lack of necessary chemical elements in the body.

  Well, now I get it. I have acquired the regeneration function, but for it to operate, you need to eat well. When I looked at the clock in the interface, my eyes bugged out. It turns out that seven hours have passed since the start of the battle. I wanted to take another look at the status of my character, but a sudden bout of sleepiness knocked me down. So I fell asleep, not even eating another piece of my dry ration. I woke up due to the persistent squeaking of the system message for the second time:

  Message to all! The first clan association, the Legion, has been created! It has the status of a free paramilitary formation. As an added incentive, the government of Alfarome allocates territory for the clan association to use and awards them a 15% discount in all governmental offices.

  Yeah, there's the first clan created. Why were they so slow? The clans tend to be created in the first hours, in new games. And here it’s only by the end of the third day, and only the first clan has been registered. But that's all clan affairs, I shouldn’t worry about it. I need to focus on my current situation. My life bar 43 units, fatigue was empty, and hunger was now empty again as well. The attempt to move my hand was successful and didn’t even cause me any painful sensations.

  Bending and unbending my left hand a couple of times, I began to experiment further. I started to warm up my fingers and in the end, even made a couple of rotations with different joints. The pain was hardly felt at all, but my hand had seriously lost a lot of its flexibility and some movements didn’t work at all. Checking my legs gave me almost the same results. I even dared to get up and walk around the room a couple of times: from one side to the other. I wouldn’t be able to move quietly – while walking, I had to move my right leg up and down, since it almost couldn’t bend at the knee. Leaning back against the door again, I opened my character status.

  First name: Volper

  Level: 9

  Experience: 10223/94557

  ...

  ...

  ...

  Between life and death - you looked into the face of death. Who are you: a lucky guy or a loser? After all, not only did you look into the eyes of Death, but It also looked into yours.

  Awards:

  The award pin "Will to Live" is a triangular sign with the palm of a hand on it, with a bloody heart clenched in a fist next to it. Every genuine warrior, seeing this award pin, will treat you with respect for your desire to survive. After all, the main target is to survive, in order to fulfill the remaining orders.

  Injuries:

  …damaged tendons of your left arm, less control of the left arm due to torn tendons… To treat the injury, you’ll need to seek medical help with a surgical procedure.

  … reduced function of the right knee joint, up to the third degree. The function of flexion and extension of the right knee joint is
extremely limited. It may cause periodic pain, and it also lowers the maximum weight capacity by twenty percent. The speed of movement is reduced. The noise level produced when moving is increased. To treat the injury, you’ll need to seek medical help with a surgical procedure.

  Personal account: 5,820 credits

  Fucking shit! Wow, so many bad news at once. I’d already been hoping that the regeneration would correct everything, but no, there were severe consequences to my wounds, which, unfortunately, could only be solved in two ways: I go either to the physicians, or to respawn. I’ll always have time to respawn, there’s no need to hurry; for now, it's better to take a breather and try to find my weapons. I didn’t remove my bandages, judging that, when I got out of here, I'd go straight to the doctors; I’ll let them take the bandages off. Putting all the scattered things back into my backpack, even the wrappers of the bandages, and placing it on my back, clutching the knife in my right hand, I slowly opened the door.