Adam Online: Absolute Zero

THE ENTIRE WORLD of Rim Zero spread out at my feet. Space contorted strangely to display its entire area. That said, it wasn't large: at the center was Town Zero, and around it were familiar old zones. Firefly Swamp, Mercurian Ruins, Mechanodestructor Heap...

One of the angel's skills was the ability to see every player. All I had to do was focus on a zone for it to expand, rotating before me like a globe. It seemed that angels didn't fly. It was as if they hovered in place, turning the world beneath them. It was a stunning sensation of omnipotence.

I could see the name Amy McDonald roaming through the Mechanodestructor Heap. I could not only see her stats (human, level four) but also her current quest: Find the First Mechanodestructor Core. The piercing gaze even penetrated her equipment: a novice tablet with a couple of upgrades and booklets. No medkits left. She'd swapped her Glock X5 for a Lefaucheux revolver, the best weapon of all the pistols available in the Rim Zero stores.

Several mechanical spiderbots hid behind a hill in the girl's path on the heap. They were the weak but numerous denizens of the heap. The girl hadn't seen them. Alas, Amy, you won't complete this quest without a medkit.

I examined the stats of the character I'd taken over:

Crusher, Angel.

Guild: Black Wave.

Class: Patron.

Level: 292.

Strength: 100.

Perception: 42.

Agility: 30.

Knowledge: 97.

Spirit: 65.

Luck: 23.

Reputation: 45 (Friendly).

Angelic Aura: 31,544/65,000.

Mana: 9,560/97,000.

Instead of Health, angels had Spirit, whose level determined the amount of their Angelic Aura. Crusher's was lower than its initial value due to his getting involved in a battle as a soldier.

The mana value for angels was calculated the same as for magic characters: Knowledge multiplied by the player level, plus skills increasing mana. Crusher's low mana level was because he'd spent it on creating a Blessing, a special buff that he gave to his guildmates. However, his mana was slowly rising.

I cast my gaze to the battlefield. My Leonarm was frozen in a strange pose: on his knees, hands clasped and raised to the sky as if in prayer. So that was how controlling angels worked?

The mechanodestructors and the bizoid still hid behind the cover of their mound. Their health and armor were continually increasing. A little longer and they'd begin their attack. I had to hurry while I had them in the palm of my hand. Or rather, an angelic hand.

Alright. Time to get back to earthly affairs.

I skimmed through the angel's skills. Most of them, naturally, were meaningless in the current situation.

Angelic Patience, level 10.

The more you give, the more you receive.

You bestow Blessing upon all players on the ground:

+10 Stamina.

+10 Strength.

+10 Health.

In exchange, you receive an increase in Reputation.

Or:

Divine Messenger.

In a difficult situation, a player can summon the angel using a Prayer (prayers are obtained in Temples).

Attention: there is a fine for failing to answer a prayer:

Angelic Aura: -10,000.

Reputation: -20.

That was the downside of angels: if you use your skills to harm another player, regardless of race, your Angelic Aura dropped. It dropped quickly and irrevocably. Nothing could restore the Angelic Aura bar. It was permanently reduced.

Since they had no Health, angels were immortal... How could they be destroyed?

Oh, right: once the Angelic Aura dropped to zero, the angel becomes a fallen angel. He fell from the sky to the earth, taking on physical form, transforming into a simple human with wings. Then he could be killed.

Hmm, this angel was an interesting character... But it wasn't suitable for everything. S.e.x, alcohol and drugs made the Angelic Aura drop like a stone. Even bad language damaged the aura with every word. Having taken over the angel, I could drop its Angelic Aura to zero merely with a long stream of swearwords.

Angels fulfilled the role of scouts on the battlefield, and something like bards, supporting their allies with buffs. They were omniscient, capable of perceiving other players' equipment, but were limited from directly interfering in earthly affairs.

Alright. What could I send down on my enemies? The beam of light that forced me to the ground turned out to be called Stairway to Heaven. It was actually intended for quickly moving a praying player from one zone to another. But it could also be used as a weak weapon.

The angel had few weapons: an angelic sword, a bow, something called Krishna's Pistol, which didn't kill, but fired a powerful blessing pulse, the Trumpet of Jericho, and Solar Pillar.

The timer counted down. Enough studying. Time to use this conquered angel for its purpose. I didn't know whether my Angelic Shepherd skill would block the player completely, or if he could still talk to his guildmates. Even if it did block him, they'd quickly figure out that something had happened to their comrade if he stopped responding.

The symbol of the Solar Pillar spell had been hanging in front of the angel for a while. That meant that Crusher had been planning to use it against me.

I span the battlefield beneath me, focusing on the bizoid, Most Ancient Evil. I had no idea what the new race was capable of, so I feared the worm most of all.

* * *

I don't know how it all looked from below, but from above the sight was magnificent. Clouds gathered around me. The airflows formed something like a pattern with bright yellow rays lancing through it. At the center where I was, the blue sky disappeared and the vastness of space opened up. A vague flow of energy fell down onto the bizoid, filled with flashes of light reminiscent of human bodies.

The bizoid stopped crawling under the ground. The strength of the spell forced him to the surface, held him in the air for a moment. I looked at the gigantic worm's body. It was as big as a train. Tentacles, legs and pincers grew across its entire body. The entire mass writhed, covered in mud and a yellowish slime, which probably helped it slither its way through the earth. I didn't know which advantages the bizoid species had, but beauty certainly wasn't one of them.

A white spot grew at the center of its ringed body, quickly absorbing its flesh. The damage increased as the spot grew. I checked: all the damage was attributed to me, meaning Leonarm, not Crusher, the angel's owner.

Attention: you have attacked a creation of God.

Angelic Aura reduced to 21,544.

Attention: you have deliberately and treacherously attacked a member of your own guild.

Angelic Aura reduced to 16,544.

Reputation reduced to -32, disgust.

Good NPCs will try to avoid conversing with you, will ignore you, and if you are persistent, they will call the police. High chance of refusal of service.

The effect of the Solar Pillar ended. The sky cleared. The bizoid transformed into a salted mummy and fell to the earth, covering the mounds with a white layer of salt.

Attention: you have taken a life that was not yours. God perceives that you are unworthy of the role of divine messenger.

Angelic Aura reduced to 6,544.

Reputation reduced to -44, strong disgust.

Only bandit NPCs will talk to you, or police during an arrest. Most legal merchants will refuse you service. No access to services of Projectoria and Respec-T stations. You will be automatically blacklisted.

My time was coming to an end. I had forty seconds until I was sent back.

"***** ****!" I cried in my trumpeting voice. "F…*** a…***!"

Angelic Aura reduced to 2,147.

Twenty-five seconds. Did I have time? I couldn't remember enough swearwords. Then it hit me:

"There is no God!"

Attention: you have crossed over to the path of evil. The heavens have never seen such an unworthy angel. Descend to where you belong.

Angelic Aura reduced to -7,853.

Special skill gained: Apostate.

I didn't bother reading what the skill did. I leapt from the falling angel and returned toward Leonarm's body in a dizzying fall. I cleared the warning messages from my view: while I was soaring through the skies, Leonarm had taken a dozen new hits, and his Health bar was dangerously low.

There was a flash in the sky. The outline of a man appeared. He started to fall, folding his scorched wings behind him.

I aimed down the sight of my Uzi and fired.

Leonarm (Human) killed Crusher (Fallen Angel) using: Uzi Machine Pistol.

* * *

While in the angel's form, I'd memorized the location of the brothers behind the mound. I chose the most powerful grenades I still had left after my compression backpack broke, then asked my personal assistant to calculate the best angle to throw them.

Wait a bit, it replied.

After a few seconds, an overlay appeared in front of me. The height of the mound, wind speed, distance to the target and strength of throw. A crosshair appeared at the center of the overlay. By moving my head, I aimed the crosshair over the second one on the overlay. Swinging my arm, I threw the grenades one after another.

All four exploded on the other side of the mound. Numerous damage notifications flashed in the cloud of dust and salt left by the bizoid. During the battle, my experience bar had gone up by several hundred points at least. Various achievements popped up in the notification windows I'd moved to the edge of my vision.

Before the twin brothers had a chance to recover, I started limping toward them. I reloaded my Uzi on the way. But a new notification made me stop:

Fortunado (Mechanodestructor) killed Grisha (Mechanodestructor) bare-handed.

I switched to an open channel.

"Have you gone mad? Why the fratricide? Couldn't wait for me to finish you both off? Think a little pre-death leveling will help you?"

You're way off the truth.

"But I'm very close to you," with those words, I climbed the mound and saw the two mechanodestructors. They lay awkwardly, covered in earth and salt, legs akimbo. And didn't move. The fragment of leg that I'd shot off still moldered with a blue flame. Neither of the mechanodestructors moved as I approached.

Fortunado continued talking. "We know that strong players leveled you up. But you're not bad either. You almost finished us off alone. Although it's all because of the hack. Players at our level aren't meant to be here, so nothing works like it should."

"Now I'll deal with you once and for all..." Then I lowered my weapon.

Hexagonal holes yawned in the bodies of both mechanodestructors. Both Grisha and Fortunado were already gone from the battlefield.

The lower level mechanodestructor was a small, hexagonal robot about the size of a nightstand. It moved on a wide monowheel. Instead of eyes, it had one black-and-white camera. At the sides of the nightstand were hands with clumsy claws that couldn't even pick up a bottle without breaking it. All its equipment is kept in a body that opens to the front, like an ordinary oven. Or like a nightstand.

That little robot is called the 'Mechanodestructor Core' and serves as a base for further upgrades. The core is set inside a structure made specially for it. It transforms from a nightstand into a gigantic six-legged robot spider, a human-like transformer, a giant armored self-propelled gun, a flying machine... The mechanodestructor is the apparatus overlaid on the core. Without the core, it's just a heap of scrap metal. By the same token, without the apparatus, the core is nothing but a harmless nightstand on a monowheel. A nightstand capable only of nipping at the enemy with its pincers.

From what I remembered, characters of the mechanodestructor race were the most expensive to maintain. They need a garage to keep an entire zooload of add-ons: for swimming, flying, walking and so on.

I examined the smoking mounds as if trying to glimpse a nightstand joyously rolling away from me on a monowheel.

"But why did you kill your brother?"

"His core was damaged. He couldn't move on his own. Better I get the experience from killing him than you."

"Little early to celebrate. I'll easily catch up to you, pipsqueak."

"Good luck, Leonarm," Fortunado continued. "I don't know who put a price on your head. But since the client gave us a nuclear bomb, you can come to your own conclusions." "A nuclear... What?"

A flash of white light filled the air. I had just enough time to notice a mushroom cloud rising behind my back, where the mechanodestructors' frames had been left behind. Next I heard a mighty roar, and then darkness fell, with hundreds of scrolling lines:

Fortunado (Mechanodestructor Core) killed Leonarm (Human) using the 2.9 kiloton Big Pulowski atomic bomb.

The unfortunate facts followed:

Damage taken: -12,120,000.

Attention: you died in Rim Zero.

Penalties for dying in a low-level zone:

-50% to all achievements.

-75% capital.

Your new level: 161.

Not the end of the world. I could get back to level three hundred in two or three months. But a new message appeared:

Attention: the Big Pulowski nuclear bomb is a weapon of absolute destruction. You did not survive the explosion. All your achievements have been reset, all your skills have been reset, all your stats...

Little early to celebrate. I'd forgotten that the default Adam Online interface had an awful feature: it showed all messages, even those that had lost all meaning due to following messages.

"I got it, I got it!" I shouted helplessly into the darkness.

How would you rate your gaming experience?

(All data are processed and stored in accordance with the rule Processing Confidential Data in Virtual Reality Extranet Systems adopted by the UN in 2099. Article 3, Paragraph 14-2. Please contact support if you have any questions).

������

I pressed five stars just to get the message out of the way.

The darkness faded. The sensation of a weightless body returned. All the parts of the neural interface that Leonarm's UniSuit generated had disappeared. Gravity kicked in, and I fell into the center of a bright square.

Another second and I stood on the dusty stones of Town Zero's central square.

I wore a standard grey vest and jeans. I had a ten-shot Glock X5 in a holster and a knife at my belt. A lighter and a paper map in my left pocket. In my hands were three booklets: "Guidebook on Rim Zero of the Adam Online Universe", an advert for the Tenshot weapon store, and "Adam Online Version 101.45 Update Information".

I had a small uncomfortable bag on my shoulder. In it was a tablet, a flat box of rounds and a Small Medkit.

The standard set of the new character. But no: the tablet in my bag showed a series of new notifications. New characters don't usually get anything like that.