Black Hat (Afterlife Online Book 2) Read online

  BLACK HAT

  AFTERLIFE ONLINE

  BOOK TWO

  Domino Finn

  Copyright © 2017 by Domino Finn. All rights reserved.

  Published by Blood & Treasure, Los Angeles

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to reality is coincidental. This book represents the hard work of the author; please reproduce responsibly.

  Cover Typography by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design LLC.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-946-00882-4

  DominoFinn.com

  Also by Domino Finn

  AFTERLIFE ONLINE

  Reboot

  Black Hat

  BLACK MAGIC OUTLAW

  Dead Man

  Shadow Play

  Heart Strings

  Powder Trade

  Fire Water

  SHADE CITY

  SYCAMORE MOON

  The Seventh Sons

  The Blood of Brothers

  The Green Children

  0530 Castle Crashers

  I inched forward in the narrow passage. Oppressive was a better way to describe it: Warm. Damp. Claustrophobic. And once I left the skylight I'd slipped into behind me, it was dark. Very, very dark.

  What could've been a straightforward raid of a crumbling castle had evolved. Work smarter, not harder, was my motto. Instead of taking the head-on approach, I'd scaled a series of makeshift stone and wooden structures, stacking upward like a pyramid against a raging body of water. The Black Keep was part castle, part city, and part dam. My map had finally revealed that once we'd sufficiently explored the area. The river was the reason the entire basin was so damn humid.

  The party chat window blinked.

  Kyle: More tangos on our six, Echo Squad.

  I halted my search and arched an eyebrow. Kyle was still on the outer surface of the keep—in broad daylight. We hadn't just peacefully strolled in, of course. The wildkins were dead set on giving us trouble. Even though I couldn't see or hear Kyle, we could message each other in party chat.

  Talon: Echo Squad? What's that?

  Kyle: That's us, bro.

  Talon: I keep telling you, this isn't a squad—it's a party. Wrong game genre.

  Kyle: Copy that, Maverick.

  I rolled my eyes. Some things couldn't be helped.

  Talon: Can you handle them?

  Kyle: Not a problem. For now. But I'd feel more comfortable jumping into the skylight and joining you in dungeon diving.

  I couldn't believe I was gonna resort to this, but it was the easiest way.

  Talon: You have your orders, soldier. Now maintain radio silence unless absolutely necessary.

  Kyle: Copy that, Maverick.

  I sighed. In the distance, I heard the muted scream of a wildkin.

  We'd signed up for this pagan quest expecting to kill more goblins, but apparently pagans come in all shapes and sizes. Unlike their green counterparts, wildkins are very human in size and shape. Strip any one of us naked, smear us with dirt, garb us in bones and paint, grow out our hair, and anybody'd be hard-pressed to find a single difference between the so-called races.

  Which was a little unsettling. Killing wildkins didn't feel especially enlightened, but it helped that they came at us with bloodthirsty zeal. Out here in their territory, it was kill or be killed.

  I pressed ahead in the passage. It was triangular shaped. Stone floor. One wall made of stacked stone blocks; the other a slanted roof of wood that used the old bricks for support. As I crawled forward, layers of leaves and whatever else the wildkins piled on the roof blocked out the last of the stray lines of sunlight. Blackness took over.

  I was employing a couple of new skills. Sneak was exactly what it sounded like. With the rest of "Echo Squad" raising hell above, this wasn't an ideal stealth scenario, but being alone in an unlit tunnel, it was more of a best-practices thing.

  Darkvision was my other new skill, and it slowly clarified the scene. This wasn't a passage so much as rafter space. The wildkins stood as tall as people and there was barely enough room in here for that. There were no treasures or guards or anything, really. Just twisted bunches of straw stuffed into random crevices on the floor and wall.

  Also, a dead end. I cursed.

  An explosion sounded behind me, timed to a flash of fire and light. I tightened my grip on the dragonspear and charged backward. Kyle lay on in his back amid the wreckage of shattered roofing. A fresh hole in the ceiling bathed him in sunlight, and fire littered the debris.

  Kyle was a brewmaster. Unless the wildkins had gotten into alchemy, there was no doubt he'd fumbled one of his potions.

  "You okay?" I asked, just as a mob holding a sharpened stick dropped into the passage. He spun to my voice.

  I gritted my teeth. "Big mistake."

  We ran at each other. Without a lot of room in the tunnel to maneuver, I opted for surprise. While still fifteen feet away from contact, I triggered the dash skill and propelled into him. His paltry stick snapped against the might of my legendary dragonspear.

  Surprise!

  Disarm!

  You dealt 47 damage to [Wildkin]

  [Wildkin] is defeated

  103 XP awarded

  Completely outmatched, he crumpled to the ground. I winced at the grotesque expression frozen on his face. Except for the pointed ear, he looked just like a normal person. I paused, unsure of—

  "Watch out!"

  I spun in the direction of Izzy's warning. Above me, in midair, sunlight glinted off a steel sword swinging down in both hands like an action frame of a comic book. The wildkin had me dead to rights, without enough warm-up time to activate my crossblock.

  A barrel-sized block of ice intercepted him like a wrecking ball. The poor guy never even made it into the passage. A muffled oof and multiple crashing sounds followed him down the roof of the pyramid.

  A five-foot-tall pixie with lavender skin blocked the sun above. Her face was plastered with disappointment. "That's the last one."

  "For now," coughed Kyle, repeating his earlier sentiment. He grimaced and climbed to his feet. The breastplate and mail had protected him from most of the damage. We were still in business.

  Izzy lightly hopped to the stone floor, light-blue dress and cape fluttering in the wind. "They're definitely on to us," she agreed. "What've you found?"

  I swallowed. "Well, nothing yet."

  "What?"

  "NOTHING YET," I repeated loudly.

  Izzy narrowed her eyes. "I heard what you said. I was expressing disbelief." She looked around. "So much for the great plan."

  "It's a solid plan," I insisted.

  Kyle nodded in support. "Got us this far."

  Izzy strode ahead, her small frame not requiring her to duck. "A dead end?"

  We followed. I was short enough to fair well, but Kyle was an inch above six feet. This space simply wasn't built for him.

  I ticked fingers to my accomplishments. "I was the one who found the quest. I was the one who had the idea to scale the pyramidal outer wall and use the recall runes to get you up here. I was the one who found the skylights to sneak in. We're at the summit of the Black Keep and our hands are clean."

  I quietly noted the generous quantity of wildkin blood on my palms and wiped it on my coat.

  "Relatively. So here we are."

  "He's right," agreed Kyle. "We skipped the whole dungeon."

  Izzy scoffed. "You call this a dungeon?" She pointed to the batches of twigs and straw. Excited cooing and fluttering now surrounded the nests. "Those are roosting birds. We're not in a pagan dungeon. We're in an attic. Those aren't skylights. They're... bird holes. And now we're backed into a corner."

  The passa
ge ended abruptly in a wall of horizontal wood beams. Not finely planed two-by-fours, mind you. This was more log-cabin style, except the trees used were much smaller.

  "I was working on it." Kyle moved to light a torch and I signaled him to stop. "Hold off on that. Izzy, can you do something about the light?"

  She shrugged and retreated down the passage. Her ice magic made quick work of the open flames. She also did something to plug the sunlight coming through the roof. As the passage darkened again, the area filled in with more detail than a torch would provide. The corners of my mouth crooked up.

  You see, I may not have known exactly where I was going, but that didn't mean I was without a plan. I'd been reading up on Haven mechanics, wondering how to best spend my plethora of skill points. In the end someone else had made the decision for me.

  A thief by the name of Crux posted a discovery to an urbex community. Turns out skills work slightly differently in conjunction with others. Part of the evolving game world. You could say they sort of mod each other. In this case, a player interested in dungeon diving found a cool trick the devs probably hadn't intended.

  First up were a couple of general survival skills. Navigation offered a HUD: in-game overlays with extra information about direction and terrain, like compass directions and well-worn paths. Nothing exemplary by any means but handy for a scout who wants to be aware of his environment.

  Cartography was more interesting. Not the mapmaking part—my craft attribute was too low to produce anything appealing. But to create detailed maps, one needs to be aware of said details, so the cartography skill also enhances in-game maps with additional info.

  The combination of HUD overlays with heightened map awareness meant assessing dungeon routes was much easier. The insight had inspired my plan to enter the Black Keep from the top.

  It gets better.

  The trick was to combine these with darkvision. Enhanced vision in lowlight turns out to be superior to torchlight, both in range and detail. It's counterintuitive as all hell because anybody in a dark dungeon wants to crack a light, but the reward for not doing so was much more information—as long as you're equipped with the skill combo. It essentially gave dungeons an easy button.

  Which is why, after scanning the area and swapping back and forth with my map, I was now staring at a prompt that showed the passage continued ahead. I was the newest dungeon speed-runner on the block. At least until the skill combo was nerfed.

  My spear disappeared from my hand and was replaced by a small whittling knife. I set the blade to the binding of the pinioned wall.

  "That's gonna take forever," complained Kyle. He lowered his shoulder and charged, forcing me to dive clear. He crashed through the splintered wall with a heavy thud and a cloud of dust, followed by more coughing.

  Izzy returned and stared dumbly at him, then me.

  "What?" said Kyle defensively. "It worked for the roof."

  I chuckled.

  The three of us pressed ahead in the darkness. I took the lead while they moved slowly, unable to see well. The ground transitioned from stone to packed dirt. The pyramid appearance was just a sheltered mountain face. There could be any number of tunnels snaking through the incline. I wondered if this was a shortcut to our objective after all.

  The ground creaked beneath my boots. The dirt gave way to pinioned wood, just like the wall, except it was a tunnel bridge. There must've been a crevasse below, though I couldn't make out anything but darkness.

  I waited until Kyle and Izzy caught up. "Watch the floor," I whispered.

  The brewmaster tested the platform with a heavy foot. "I'm not walking on that, bro."

  "We have to."

  "No, we don't. Maybe Izzy's right. This isn't a passage. It's barely tall enough for the wildkins. We're just stuck in the roof somewhere."

  "All the better. This is the medieval equivalent of sneaking through the air ducts."

  "Fine. But we need a torch. We don't have darkvision and I'm not about to plummet to a virtual death because I stepped on a rotten log."

  I grunted. "Okay, but let me scout ahead in the darkness. Give me a minute before lighting up and following."

  "Copy that, Maverick."

  I ignored him. A precipitous bridge was better than partaking in his Top Gun fantasies.

  Scurrying footsteps echoed through the tunnel behind us.

  "Crap," said Izzy. "More wildkins. They broke through my ice wall."

  "Sorry, bro. It's time to light up."

  My face soured. "Goose would never do that to Maverick."

  His torch blazed to life and painted us orange. "Goose dies. Screw that. I'm Ice Man."

  I nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense."

  "Focus, boys," snapped Izzy. "Talon, get going. We'll hold them off. You better be right about this or we'll be respawning in no time."

  I gritted my teeth and took off over the platform faster than I should have. It swayed terribly. Combat broke out in my wake, but I wasn't overly worried. Wildkins didn't look like goblins, but difficulty-wise they were more or less on par with them. At level 9, and 8 for Kyle, they were yellow enemies. Not as trivial as non-aggroing whites, but simple challenges nonetheless. Only really dangerous in numbers. In that sense, this narrow passage gave us a tactical advantage.

  A beam of wood snapped under my boot.

  Agility Check...

  Pass!

  I expertly rolled to the side. Agility was my primary attribute. At 24, I could handle many vital situations with ease. I just had to make sure Izzy and Kyle were more careful.

  Metal weapons clanged against each other. The wildkins had already engaged in close combat. I fought the urge to assist my party and scouted ahead.

  The wood platform connected with natural rock. There was an outcropping, a formation jutting from the floor. Was it a pedestal? A lever? I shivered as I recalled the last stone obelisk I'd encountered. That one had turned out to be the horn of a giant buried cyclops. I hurried to the ground to study it.

  I was both disappointed and relieved to realize the large rock... was just a large rock. The passage continued but quickly grew smaller. A breeze carried through from outside. I detected a faint amount of light ahead, as if the passage would soon end in an outside exit, no closer to our objective than when we'd started.

  I paused and studied the area. Either my dungeon skills were missing something or I'd been completely wrong about this place. In heavy darkness, why wasn't I seeing a secret passage?

  I trudged back past the rock and stopped on the edge of the natural ground. I flicked my map on and off.

  It had to be.

  I knelt beside the stone outcropping and felt around it on all sides. Its irregular shape had a coarse finish. I grinned and produced a rope from my inventory and began with the knots.

  "There're too many of them!" Izzy screamed. "Fall back!"

  A huge burst of magic filled the tunnel. Even as far away as I was, frigid air washed over me. I stood and turned to face them.

  Echoes resounded my way. I stepped carefully forward onto the wood platform. The beams were thrumming to a fast beat. Footsteps. Panicked running.

  "No," I whispered.

  I burst into a desperate run. If Kyle and Izzy were too rough with the platform, they'd fall to their deaths. "Watch your step!" I screamed.

  "Reloading," said Kyle in a clipped voice that told me he was also running.

  Izzy may have been a five-foot pixie, but Kyle was a pretty big guy. This structure couldn't support his careless weight. I abandoned all precaution and barreled ahead even faster.

  Their torchlight came into view first. I yelled, "Get behind me!" and didn't slow.

  Izzy rounded the corner chugging a spirit potion. "They have strong counter-magic. Should I use my legendary power?"

  "Not yet." Four beats later Kyle followed, looking a little rough. "Grab the rope!" I said as I dashed past.

  "Wha—?" started Kyle.

  He turned to me as his boot cleaved an old l
og in two and his leg slipped through the floor. He caught the rope trailing behind me, but not before his armored girth splintered the wood supports under him. The entire platform shuddered.

  Izzy skidded to a stop. "You're not doing what I think you're doing, are you?"

  "I am," I called back, hoping she had the sense to grab the rope line.

  Ahead of me, a formation of wildkins rushed down the tunnel. They stood shoulder to shoulder, managing a row of five in these tight quarters. That alone was daunting, but with the shimmering yellow aura protecting them like a hovering shield it was no wonder Izzy and Kyle had booked it. Like me, the wildkins rushed over the platform with careless abandon.

  Careless, maybe, but at least I had a safety line.

  I braced my spear in both hands and heaved downward. The shimmering white blade snapped through reams of wood. I backed away, closer to the hole Kyle was currently struggling with.

  "Help a brother out," he said.

  I snickered. "Sure thing, Ice Man."

  I ripped the spear into the last wood beam groaning under his weight.

  "Remind me to kill you later," grumbled Izzy.

  Amid twenty clattering footfalls, the entire bridge snapped in half.

  I only had time to see the wildkins widen their eyes in alarm before I fell myself. After so much structural damage, the beams of wood offered no further support. They were debris now. Missiles to avoid as we all plummeted downward. The knotted rope pulled tightly around my waist. I swung backward with Kyle and Izzy toward the rock outcropping to which the other end of the rope was tied. The wildkins had no such parachute.

  Jagged wood rained down. Large sections of the platform broke away. Our descent was halted by the rope, so luckily we remained above most of the destruction. As we collided with the far wall, the rope snapped at my waist. I tumbled down the slope until I, too, met the ground.