Warsinger by James Baldwin (most important books of all time txt) 📕

were headed toward becoming ridiculously powerful. But Lucien had almost killed me with one badly executed strike when he was Level 35... higher than me, but not THAT much higher. At level 28 to 30, I would be strong enough to beat his ass, but I needed to start actively specializing in something: one or two stats, a set of interconnecting combat and arcane abilities, and non-combat skills that complemented those abilities and brought all the powers I had into play.

For now, though, all I had was points. I put them into Black Lotus, bringing that ability up to Level III, and Shattering Darkness. S.D wasn’t an ability I’d used a lot so far, but after hearing about Baldr’s plans for Artana, I had a feeling that there’d be a lot of armored enemies in my future.

“Ugh. These journals are all bullshit,” Suri groaned across from me, folding one of them into her Inventory and slumping back in her seat. “I never knew the Rat was such a whinge-bucket. There's nothing in that one that's gonna help us find them.”

“What was he writing about?” I shook out of brooding for a moment, peering through the translucent menu screen at her.

“Mostly whining about being 'trapped' in Archemi,” Suri sighed. “Try'na think of ways to get out of here and back to 'Los Angeles', wherever that is.”

“L.A. is where I used to live. Imagine a smoky dump of about twelve million people living on top of one another, with no money, no time, and weird tastes in fashion, and your mental picture is probably accurate.” I refocused on my screen, frowning at it. “Hey, what do you think the best way to train Willpower is?”

“Willpower? Uhh...” Suri trailed off. “I dunno. Playing chess?”

“That's more Int, I think.”

“Willpower is all about resisting stuff, right?” Suri shrugged. “You probably train it through resisting temptation, defeat, stuff like that.”

“Resisting temptation, huh?” I scratched the stubble on my jaw. “Guess I'm starting up No-Nut November.”

“Well, yeah. Like, say you get depressed and really just want to get shitfaced. If you resist that and go do something productive instead, you'd probably level Willpower. I'm not much help there, though. It's my lowest stat.”

“I bet Ignas has Willpower out the ass.” I tried inducing feelings of determination to level my Willpower, but no friendly red 'stat increase' arrow appeared. Worth a shot.

Suri nodded. “Ebisa might know more about Willpower. Or Vash. I’d ask them about it.”

I nodded, and filed that away. “Alright, well, I know one thing that raises my Will. Give me one of those journals. I'll help with the reading, because I sure as hell need willpower to do that.”

“Try a couple of scrolls, first. The Rat’s handwriting looks like a chicken walked through a pot of ink and onto some vellum.” Several scrolls appeared in Suri's hand, and she passed them over to me.

I gingerly unrolled one of them and immediately began to struggle with it, while our carriage rumbled through the ornate city gates and started on the long switchback road up to Vulkan Keep.

“Let’s see here. ‘Jeez, I don't know what has got onto... into... Nick,’” I sounded out slowly. “He's... bottom? No, 'gotten'. He's gotten really fucked up since the Grade... Great Server Crash. He keeps talking about all the stuff we should be doing but isn't doing anything to help. I'm so tired after trying to... keep trying and falling to find ways to access the Penalties-”

“Panel,” Suri corrected, not looking up. “He keeps talking about some Admin Panel in these ramblings of his. You know what that is?”

“Yeah. It's the menu that gives the Architects their powers over the world,” I replied. “Remember the big blackout that let you escape Al-Asad?”

“Sure do.”

“All of the Architects lost their access to the Admin Panel after that event. Without the panel, they’re just regular Starborn, same as us. Looks like Jacob was trying to hack into it, get his administration powers back.” I kept trying to read the parchment the old-fashioned way, but after a couple more minutes, the old squirrel brain kicked in. My eyes and mind started wandering, and my knees started jittering up and down. After misreading 'succeeded' as 'zucchini', I cried uncle, put the letter into my Inventory, and had Navigail read the rest of it to me.

“Jeez, I don't know what's got into Nick. He's gotten really fucked up since the Great Server Crash. He keeps talking about all the stuff we should be doing to escape but isn't doing anything to help. I'm so tired after trying and trying and failing to find ways to access the Panel, but none of the backend routes are there any more. It fucking sucks. I just want to get out of here and log out and see if one of the Shards will take me in.

The prison idea was great when we were just playing around, but now I'm stuck here it feels more like a horror movie than a hentai. I'm so done. We're almost finished the teleporter, but it's hard with an actual fucking SUPERSOLDIER boxing us in out there. I don't know what the hell Nick was thinking when he imported her into the game. Sure, the 'break a princess to be our slave' RP thing was great and everything, but now she's able to level herself and is basically a fucking virus in the database-”

My eyes widened.

“-and she's got an axe with our names on it. They weren’t supposed to be self-aware, for fuck’s sakes! If she finds the Morning Stars and they work out what she is, we're screwed. Nic is going ahead to Dalim to kill them all. I won't be going with him. I'm going somewhere else. All I wanted was to act out some hentai. I didn't sign up for this serial killer shit.”

I came out of the listening trance to see Suri staring at me. “Hector, what's wrong? You stopped breathing and blinking and went real still. I know you're like,