The Clan (25 page)

"Absolutely," Lurch agreed. "I had to buy everything here, even the earth worms, and these goblins gobble them down like there's no tomorrow! You can't just stick the Singing Bluebells in the ground! You need to provide them with a proper eco system."

"Very wise," I winced. "Listen, I just pray to God you don't buy any more worms or whatever without asking me first. Are you a responsible building or a market stall? I'll tear you down and build some outhouses instead! That's a promise!"

"Eh, I-" Lurch faltered. "Root worms, they don't propagate, you see. You need to buy new ones every month..."

"How many?" I groaned.

"Only a couple thousand. If no one starts eating them, of course."

"How much?"

"Peanuts! A hundred gold," Lurch pleaded.

I stared at the plants, their jingle anxious now. They were beautiful, nothing to say. Besides, it would be a shame if they died... "Very well, then. And not a penny more. Also, I'd like to ask you to move one bluebell to a pot. I need to make a gift."

Finally, the second heap bared its sides gleaming in the sun. I poked at it with my virtual cursor, selecting objects as targets to read their stats.

A ragged piece of metal, the side of a good serving dish, must have made up part of something seriously heavy caliber, judging by the remaining markings and the recognizable curve of its shape:

Mithril Ore. Metal content: 8%. Weight: 13.4 Lbs.

About a dozen neat rectangular plates like those used in bulletproof jackets:

Enriched Mithril Ore. Metal content: 64%. Weight: 0.7 Lbs.

Oh. It looked like the steel invaders used an octal number system: too many of their numbers were divisible by eight. The length of the gun handle, too, suggested a much wider hand—definitely not a five-digit one.

I walked over and stuffed the plates into my bag. That was a near-pure ingot of Moon silver that might come in handy anywhere
—whether for crafting, selling or representation purposes.

I paused wondering which one of our technogenic metals it was equivalent to. Something light but robust that you could use to create heavy-duty alloys for making armor plate and things like that. Titanium? Could be.

I looked over the heap trying to second-guess its size, then shoved a couple more handfuls of frags into my bag. The whole lot probably wouldn't be enough to fill in the financial abyss but with any luck it might cover at least one third of it. The thing was to enter the market wisely, making sure I didn't bring the demand down by flooding it with offers. In that case, even my children might have to sell the strategic mithril reserves one piece at a time.

I turned to check on my team, still faltering in the courtyard, goofing around as they waited for my orders. That wasn't the deal. We had more work than we could manage and no initiative offered to get it done!

"Durin," I began spitting out orders, "make an inventory of everything. Then sort it by metal content and anything you find worth noting. Lock all the valuables in the vault and set all the weird objects aside. I'll check them myself later."

"I'll manage," the zombie grumbled. Rolling his sleeves, he headed for the precious hill.

"Spark! Check the area quick and find me a cave or a cellar, somewhere to keep all this explosive shit in. I'll give you a troll to move the stuff and a few guards. It should be at least..." I estimated the size of our arsenal, "no less than two-thirds of a mile from the external wall."

"I'll send someone in a minute," the pooch said, childlike. She was busy trying to shift the armor plates on her neck and scratch it with one hind leg
—a very doglike gesture. Lena felt sorry for her. Coming over, she began scratching the dog nice and hard. The pooch groaned in ecstasy.

"Lena?" I said.

"I'm busy, sorry. My Dad has just sent me a message. He'll be logging in in five minutes. I need to go and get him. I want to show him the castle."

Okay, Dad was an important enough excuse. Besides, I wanted to meet him myself if he was goi
ng to become a new clan member.

Le
na seemed to follow my thoughts. "You
are
going to accept him, aren't you?"

"I am. I promised, didn't I? But you're an officer yourself, so you have the right to recruit whoever you want. Bet your Dad will be pleased to see you in a serious post of authority. It's probably better you do it yourself."

"Thank you, thank you! Dad's coming, how cool!" Lena gave the indignant hound a flick on her nose and burst out laughing as she disappeared in the radiant portal.

What a kindergarten.
I turned to Cryl, about to find a job for him, when a panting goblin came running from the direction of the outer wall.

"The eggs! Master, we've found the phantom eggs!"

"How d'you know it's them?" disbelieving, I asked the cleaner.

"They're phantom ones, aren't they? You can't bite through them!" the goblin's voice trailed away as he took in both his foreman's glare and his raised fist.

I pretended I hadn't seen it. "Come on, then. Let's just hope you're right."

Ten minutes later I was climbing up the
rickety steps of an inner wall tower. I walked out onto an open platform to an energizing breeze. The place was littered with all sorts of junk.

I found it straight away
—a typical bird's nest, only instead of twigs it was made with a whole plethora of AlterWorld minerals. Marble and stone, iron and copper ores, and a scattering of scrap mithril. An ancient silver toll bell lay next to a huge chunk of quartz veined with a fat streak of gold. This nest alone could buy you a brand new Mercedes. Was its purpose purely decorative or did it conceal some hidden message?

The eggs were hard to notice in the hotchpotch gleaming with metal. But once you saw them, you couldn't mistake them for anything. How else, do you think, would a Bone Dragon's phantom clutch of eggs look like? Translucent to the point of being invisible, they were covered with the finest web of intricate carvings. They were large, at least three feet high if you or somebody else tried to stand them upright. And when you touched them, your hand sank into nothing as the eggs themselves were only an iridescent hologram
—they didn't exist in our material world.

I selected one as target.

An Egg of a Bone Dragon. A unique clutch. Chances of hatching a Phantom Dragon: 97%. Probable gender: female

Mana: 0,081,722... 731... 733... 735... /4,000,000

The last figure kept changing, growing like a gas station meter. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why all the mana growth? I chose the other egg, identified it and froze:

An Egg of a Bone Dragon. A unique clutch. Chances of hatching a Phantom Dragon: 91%. Probable gender: male

Mana: 0.000.432/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.418/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.401/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.388/4.000.000.

The chick's mana counter kept dropping by the second. Cursing, I fiddled with the settings, trying to locate the First Temple Altar control menu. It looked like the male chick was funneling his own mana to his sister trying to help her survive until their mother was back.

Found it! I pushed the mana flow bar all the way to the right, highlighted the five percent available to me and pressed
Donate
. The barely visible energy cable promptly reached from the Temple, enveloping the egg. It worked!

Mana: 0.000.132/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.278/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.398/4.000.000.

Mana: 0.000.533/4.000.000.

"That's better," I whispered to the would-be chick. "How did you expect me to face your mom
, then? How would I look her in the eye? You don't know about her eyes, do you? They make the hair on your spine bristle. A cross between a floodlight and an eighteen-inch naval gun. Now you can stop sending your mana to your sister. I'm going to redirect part of the flow to her in a minute, I just want to fill you up a bit first."

Not to waste time as I waited, I opened the castle staff menu and hired ten Drow archers whom I immediately dispatched to guard the nest. Safer that way, especially considering its value. I wasn't going to touch it for the time being, but once the chicks had fledged, I fully intended to take all the valuables to the treasury. No shortage of them there: from where I stood, I could see a very interesting ammo belt circling the nest twice. Fat fifty-caliber cartridges promised a healthy profit when melted down. And if I mana
ged to find the original gun...

Oh. I jumped up and began circling the platform, my eyes searching in all directions as I tried to estimate the potential field and flanking fire positions. Over to one side, the space between two walls was begging for a pillbox. You lured your enemy into this fire-spitting cul-de-sac and then... Oh, all the things I could do!

Never mind. Back to reality. I still had to hire a few of the more intellectual workers to move the rest of the explosives. We weren't shifting bricks, after all. I really wanted to preserve at least part of the arsenal.

The developers knew which side their bread was buttered. They charged you an arm and leg for any customized deviation from the standard. Either fit in with the rest of the crowd or prepare to shell out.

I opened the manual character generation menu, chose a troll, maxed out its strength bar, paid double for extra agility, and finally glared at the costs of intellect. One point cost the same as thirty points strength? As my inner greedy pig sniffed his indignation, I raised the monster's intellect from the level of a preschooler to a high school C-student. That had to be it; after that, the numbers went through the roof. Would have been cheaper to carry everything myself.

I saved my creation and confirmed his hiring. The troll was indeed custom-made in everything including his markings: he turned out to be an albino. Immediately I sent him to see Harlequin. As I watched his large white back, I got an idea.

"Hey! I'll call you Snowie!"

I didn't give a damn about what the Hound had told me. This wasn't a 'faceless outline'. This guy was just too unique.

The troll looked back, his red eyes focusing on me, then beamed—a broad winsome smile. He waved his paw to me and, waddling for some reason, set off to look for Harlequin.

That seemed to be it. I redistributed the mana flow equally between the two chicks and, too lazy to walk, teleported to the Temple. Everything seemed to be all right there. The puppies were crawling around, the guards stood their watch, the dwarf sniffed indignantly as he hauled armfuls of mithril deep down the corridor. I had to do something about his temper. I really didn't enjoy all that mumbling and looking daggers. What could I think of that dwarves liked? What would soften him? Beer, gold, a pole-axe, a smoking pipe and a bea
rd—this was all I knew about dwarves. Being a zombie, it was unlikely he was able to smoke or drink—on the contrary, it would upset him further. Gold was definitely inferior to mithril; a war he'd have to wait for, and as for a beard... He didn't have one, his old burns were just too bad. Could it be why he was so bitter? It was probably easier for me to walk around the city in the nude than a respected Master from the Kingdom Under the Mountain could show in public without his beard. Wonder if they had wigs for sale here? Having said that... I got an inkling of an idea.

I watched the bald dwarf leave and walked out into the courtyard. There he was, Lena's father. Time to make his acquaintance. He, too, had chosen default character settings: a human being with a small pouch
—was it a conscious choice or just mindless clicking through character generation? Then again, he was supposed to be a chief hospital physician so his IQ had to be high by definition.

I stepped closer and offered my hand. "Greetings, Sir. Welcome to the clan," I paused reading his avatar, "Alexander Nikolaevich." Hadn't anyone told this guy he could change his name?

Guessing my predicament, the doctor smiled—or rather, his lips smiled as his eyes were filled with fatigue, endless and hopeless. "Call me Alec. Or Doc, whatever you prefer. I really appreciate everything you've done for us. You have no idea how much Lena means to us. I can safely tell you that by saving her, you've saved two more lives—at least. Thank you."

I didn't know where to look. "I'm not the one you need to thank, Alexander
Niko... Alec. It's Cryl who deserves all the praise. He invested his very heart in it, not just his time and money. I hope you'll get the chance to meet Taali soon. She was very upset about your daughter's predicament. She really took it to heart."

Finally, Doc smiled a real smile: still a tired one but very sincere. "Yes, my wife told me about them. I look forward to meeting them all soon."

"Excellent. Now have a good look around and make yourself comfortable. Choose yourself an apartment and decide on its design. I'm afraid I can't allocate you much but I'll tell Lurch to set aside one percent of all resources to restore and redecorate your quarters."