Chương 47: Eventually, it will boil.

VOTING ROUND—TWO Round rating: 40 Ability Deactivated: From the Fragments to the Aftermath Ability Notification! Development points assigned: 33 Progress toward ability upgrade: 53/1000 Bonus Event Quest Update! Description: Survive a voting or hunting round. Completed: 3/X Reward: +1 Will, +10 gold, and +1 skill point for each round survived. +50, 000 clicks. Delivered immediately.

Received: +1 will (8 total) +10 gold (39 total) +1 skill point (8 total) +50, 000 clicks (645, 831 total) New Achievement: Level Twenty-One (645, 831 clicks) +2 Gold (41 total) +2 Skill Points (10 total) +1 Will (9 total) >>Nice. The nodlings are cranking out between 900-1000 clicks a minute, that is 60KC/H. >>See what I did there… kiloclicks per hour. >>That means that our 50K click bonus for each round will more than double our current click rate since the voting rounds are short.

>>Level 22 will come in about 200K clicks, just after the next hunting round ends. Then, an hour after, we will cross the threshold of one million clicks, and I bet we'll get another milestone bonus. I bet it will be a doozy. George looked at the scoreboard. Scoreboard: Red Team: 14 Blue Team: 15 Total Players remaining: 29 >>Ok. Here's what I'm seeing. That pillar of darkness guy we could only see in infrared is gone. Three redshirts named Lorelai, Vesper, and Sosotris are gone.

And that weird grey alien named The Lie is gone. >>Which is good because how could you trust a guy like that? >>Plus, his name started with the definite article, so he had it coming. >>Also, Webb's gone, obvi. >>The Red team is down four players, and the Blue team is only down one… >>… Which means that one of the "Blue team" players that TLX killed was actually on the Red team. >>What a dick. >>In other news, check out the leaderboard.

Leaderboard Pinnacle (20 votes) Diamond (12 votes) Gold (8 votes) • Neco—13 tokens, rating: 99 Silver (5 votes) • Lady Greesh—10 tokens, rating: 95 • TLX-448571001—9 tokens, rating: 88 • Pine—9 tokens, rating: 87 • Sarala—8 tokens, rating: 80 • Carthage—6 tokens, rating: 71 Bronze (3 votes) • Grey—5 tokens, rating: 70 • Ezra Deathmantle—5 tokens, rating: 68 Iron (2 votes) • George—0 tokens, rating: 54 • Urdo—2 tokens, rating: 32 • Veronica—2 tokens, rating: 31 • Tinntannabel—1 token, rating: 28 • Tycho—2 tokens, rating: 25 • Hollywood Cole—2 tokens, rating 22 • Murdge the Auctarian—1 token, rating: 20 • Misco Narisco—2 tokens, rating: 20 • Cassie—2 tokens, rating: 19 • Loveland—1 token, rating: 19 • June—1 token, rating: 18 • Top of the Morning—1 token, rating: 10 >>It is nice they give you this breather time before the vote begins.

I guess it is for licking your wounds or making rude gestures at other players. >>I get that TLX has a top ranking because he can fly and was literally made for this trial, but how the hell are these other people finding so many tokens? >>Also, it looks like the tiers on the leaderboard are relative, not absolute. That means that the more tokens the top players get, the harder it will become to climb the tiers and get more votes. >>The more we search for tokens, the more we endanger ourselves by entering new rooms.

High risk, high reward, I guess. >>Uh… George. >>New ping on the enemy radar. Check out Sarala. She's really giving you ye ol' hairy eyeball. >>She even took off her helmet to give you the full effect of that glare. Wow. >>She is either trying to pass a stone or stare-murder you right now. Sarala had come to the front of her enclosure, and her eyes were darting back and forth between George's armor and the empty enclosure where Webb used to be.

George noticed that the whole room had fallen silent except for the ever-present screeching of the voidling. Almost everyone was looking at him. Even the bald albino on the floor cracked an eye open at the sudden quiet in the room, glanced at George, and quirked his mouth in a small smile.

"Dude, sweet fit," Top said, giving George a thumbs up.

"Hey, Pine. Check this out. I got a token." He produced a prestige token in his hand and showed it to Pine. Pine ignored him. He was already sitting in his chair, and his tea cup was frozen halfway between the table and his mouth.

"How did you get that armor?" George glanced at Loveland, who was watching him with an impassive expression. When their eyes met, one eye twitched in a wink. Cassie looked between Sarala and George and covered her mouth with her hand. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"I didn't kill him," George answered. Then, he looked at Sarala and said, "The slime killed him. I just found his body."

"Charlie James and now Webb," Pine said.

"And you somehow have become a Moa." His teacup completed the journey to his mouth, but not before George heard him whisper the word fuck under his breath. >>Did you notice that Pine has jumped four levels since the trial started? >>I guess that Trial Aficionado profession ain't for nothing. >>Also, note that little fleck of blood on his cheek. >>Just one drop. >>Creepy. >>Remember that he picked that Murderhobo ability orb? The one that gives him three prestige tokens when he kills people?

>>I guess we know where those tokens came from. Sarala put her helmet back on without saying a word. <Name: Sarala Race: Human Level: 154, D-Grade Profession: Renegade Bounty Hunter Class: Flenser Abilities: Thirty Pieces of Eight; Petals On a Wet, Black Bough; Slice Slice Slice; Pale Horse, Pale Rider House: The Rook Guild: Moa House Rank: Five Metadata—Encyclopedia Esoterica: N/A> >>Your "It wasn't me!" speech was very moving, George, but I don't think you convinced her.

>>Hey, speaking of problems we don't know how to solve, I did actually compile a list. Ready? Here goes. Problems We Hopefully Don't Die From • Everyone else is passing us on the leaderboard because they know much more about how this game works than we do. • You are wearing a death trap on your head. • Prince Neco.

Sub-tasks include: ⁃ At least appear to do what he says ⁃ Make sure he doesn't die ⁃ Get him voted the hell out of here as soon as possible without pissing him off ⁃ Make sure the prince's team does not win. This is the quest that lets me send a rude joke to Neco's mom, so this is an important one. • Sarala probably wants to kill us because we took her boyfriend's armor. Also, she is a Rook and is dressed just like Neco. Not a good sign.

• You have a Saar death brand on your face, which means that Pine and that Cole asshole need to kill you before this trial is finished • You've joined your fate to Cassie. I see pros and cons. • You're still only level 21. • You have a mysterious gem embedded in your hand that almost killed us and which we do not understand. • You got drafted into a guild we know nothing about. • TLX is on our case, and you've got one of his weird and invasive tattoos on your arm.

• Not to mention that half of the other players in this game are incentivized to kill us, and the other half just might do it for the hell of it. • Last but not least, I have the sneaking suspicion that these hunting rooms are intended to implode in the late stages of the trial. If people keep doing what they're doing, the dominoes will start to fall. >>There we go. >>Phew. >>I'm feeling stressed. >>Let's list your assets.

Here we go: George's Underwhelming List of Advantages • Your only ability is a mysterious mental skill that makes you have good ideas when your life is on the line (and has some time dilation mixed in there somewhere). • You befriended a psychic child who will tell us what team everyone is on. • You have an overpowered quest generator that gives you points for doing things that will help you survive. • The armor still has an "Emissary Metalink" power that might do something useful for us.

• You have that random conceptual flare thing we picked up at the top of the ramp in the first hunting room. • You have a welding torch in your finger. • You have an ability orb to dodge a voting round and stay out in the hunting round. • We have one hard-working nodling out there, exploring the hunting maze and having the time of his life. ⁃ We have some good interface upgrades like the ultralight filter, trap detection, yadda, yadda.

>>I don't really know which list this one belongs to but apparently one of the people in this kill-or-be-killed game is related to you somehow but neither of you know who the other one is. >>George… you ok? Your pulse is racing. >>Maybe I should not have written it all out like that. George didn't respond. He could feel the expression his face was making. His breathing had gotten shallower as he read Nod's lists. There was a ringing in his ears. He wanted to sit down but held himself completely still instead.

>>"As George stared into the blank distance, his heart nearly buckled beneath the weight of the challenge ahead of him. For once, he was glad of the helmet hiding his face so that his enemies could not see his typically bland expression melt into clueless terror. A torrent of fear surged like a river in his heart… not to mention the smaller torrent trickling down his leg.

>>"Suddenly and with the force of a thunderclap, a single thought kaboomed into his head, shattering the dark panic that gripped him like lightning flashing through the stormy sky and illuminating everything its light touches… >>"For he had forgotten the only advantage that truly mattered… he was the sidekick in the story of a great hero—a hero so fey, so puissant, so multi-fingered that he had only to close his fist and his enemies would be destroyed like the fragile and fleeting side-characters they were."

Despite himself, George felt a small smile creep onto his face as he read Nod's narration. >>Who is encouraged? Raise your hand. Nod raised George's left hand high into the air. >>Dammit Nod! George pulled his hand back down. >>OK… that was my pep talk. >>Back to business. >>I think we have time for a quick room list update before Razza gets here and we get this show on the road. Room of Death Cheat Sheet (with annotations) • Hub Room: A plain, round room with portals to tons of other rooms.

If other players haven't found this one, it'll be a big advantage for us. • The Mall, 1995: • Everything Floats Down Here: Zero gravity room where I almost died and we scored Webb's armor. Probably slowly filling with slime. • Cloud Gate Phenomenon: A bunch of floating platforms above an infinite abyss. • The Skunkwords: A warehouse of shelves with a bunch of junk on them. • The Death Self: Greesh's fortress.

• Floor is Lava: The room with all the floating roads and bunkers where we started during the first hunting round. • Are You Not Entertained?: Sand coliseum with freaky snakes. RIP Nagle. • What Big Teeth You Have: Snowy forest. Site of June and Loveland's cabin hideaway. • A Change Is As Good As A Rest: Your average suburban house except everything is giant-sized. • The Distance: Giant ring track. • Hell For Leather: A crazy race track with all sorts of vehicles. We should totally go here and have a joyride.

• Safe Room: a room that is safe. >>Greesh is building a proper fortress in the Death Self room. Get this… it has a goddamn castle. She is digging in. I'm talking trenches, barbed wire, turrets—the whole lot. She has turned the area around the portals into kill traps. It is very 1917 in there. >>Also, that room seems to have a lot of prestige tokens in it, and she is snapping them up every time they respawn. >>She's farming them. >>She made a castle farm.

>>And all you've managed to do with your time is get something put into your body by not one but two more robots, find a sling, and team up with a sixth grader. >>No wonder Greesh is high on the leaderboard. >>Yeah, I do not think it is a coincidence that she went straight for that room. >>It is just another example of everyone else knowing more about this trial than we did. >>The Christ Pantocrator one is rapidly becoming filled with Vordigans. Otherwise, it is a charming old cathedral. >>Let's never go there.

>>Anyone who starts the round in there is going to be screwed. >>That reminds me… Let's tell Cassie that she should have that teleport orb out and ready to use as soon as the voting round is about to end. We'll start in the same hunting room; if it is a bad situation, she can get us out. >>We should definitely go to that room where everything is huge because it looks like a blast, and the nodling found lots of tokens there. >>What is the safe room? >>The nodling went in, and it was a re-creation of the cradle.

Our cradle. Only it was empty, except for that weird window onto the ink that you bought back when you had no idea what was going on. >>When the nodling went in, it received a notification that no one else could come in as long as it was there but that it could only enter two times during the whole trial. >>How far are we from mapping the whole maze? >>I think we are close to the 80% threshold for our quest, but there is no way we will map all of the connections between the rooms.

>>How has the nodling been able to cover so much ground? >>I'm telling you. It can basically fly. It just draws itself from thing to thing. And it is the size of a bug. The question is, how can it NOT get around everywhere? It is the perfect scout. >>Last bit of business. Before Razza shows up, we need to buy the combat log. >>It is going to tell us when people use their abilities. We aren't going to be able to stay out of fights forever, and battles are hectic affairs.

It would be nice to have a little log of everything that is actually happening. >>I was thinking the same thing. >>Yeah. >>Sure you were. >>We need to get more upgrade slots but I think this is more important than Trap Detection, which we haven't used at all. Purchased: Discard Upgrade: Trap Detection — 0 gold. Purchased: Combat Log—20 gold (21 remaining) >>Hey, wait. Your problem list said that the rooms were all going to implode. What did that mean? >>They are going to implode because they are all connected.

>>And? >>Sooooo… the slime is going to slurp its way around and start taking over at an exponential rate… and the Vordigans, and whatever Dark Arts Ezra the necromancer is cooking up and whatever the hell else everyone is up to. >>The hunting maze will become a more and more intense place to be as the trial goes on. >>Point being: Greesh might have the right idea. The hunting maze is a simmering kettle. Eventually, it will boil. >>Ok. Shhh. Here comes the big guy.

Razza's platform rose in the middle of the room, and the voting round began in earnest.