Path of Spirit (Disgardium Book #6): LitRPG Series, Dan Sugralinov [the reader ebook .TXT] 📗

must be eliminated before… Ahem… Let’s say, before the scenario of the Sleeping Gods reaches a point of no return…”

Kiran’s speech, a little quick from the Accelerant, but cogent and clear, continued for twenty minutes. The managers of the departments he mentioned supported his words with holographic illustrations, diagrams, graphs. Once done talking about why exactly the scenario of the Sleeping Gods was dangerous and what role Scyth played in it all, he moved to the Pilgrim project, starting from the very beginning:

“Few know it, but two versions of Disgardium were launched, and not many know about the first. It was a complete copy of the world, raw and not yet trialled by the official beta testers. It couldn’t even be called an alpha, really, but it was this version that incidentally became the reason for the creation of the Pilgrim project. A hundred beta testers were carefully selected by the security service. All orphans without close friends or relatives. All unique in their own way. Members of all races and creeds, all genders and ages. Deadlines loomed, there were mere months to go before Dis’s official launch, so the founding fathers gave their permission to use deep immersion. In deep immersion, time, uh…”

“Is subjective,” Peter Hovatski suggested, curator of the Cali Bottom division of the HCMO project.

“Right, Pete,” Kiran nodded, shooting him an annoyed glance. “Time there went five hundred times faster. The world lived while there was at least a single player in it, but without them, it went into sleep mode. It was important for us to figure out what happens in the later stages of the game, how the quest chains develop, what happens to the mobs and non-player characters, how the population changes through the generations…”

“How mobs migrate and evolve,” Hovatski added.

“Exactly. The first beta testers were meant to spend nearly a month in full life-support capsules. For them, it would have been forty years. Everyone in the company was certain that nothing would happen…”

“They all died,” came a hoarse voice from the far corner. “The poor bastards’ brains burnt out, and after only three days of real time.”

Kiran grit his teeth. He wanted to snap something back, but changed his mind. Bad idea to lock horns with Menfil. The man was quick, rough, and knew too much. Kiran knew to be careful with people like that. Especially when they weren’t his direct subordinates. Menfil had been installed at Snowstorm by people above Kiran, outside the citizenship categories, and he’d been there since the very launch of Disgardium.

“Not all of them, Mr. Menfil,” Kiran said to the man. “One was pulled out.”

“Who?” Chloe Cliffhanger the marketing director asked, raising her hand.

The young woman wearing a suit and old-fashioned glasses — probably to look older and more reliable — wasn’t Jackson’s favorite. She was vulturish, grasping and clever. Too clever, Kiran thought.

“That has nothing to do with the matter at hand!” he snapped, annoyed to be distracted with frivolous details.

“A certain Dennis Kaverin,” Menfil answered for him. “The boy was pulled out, his memories were wiped and he was sent on his way, with a premium capsule for his troubles…”

“Mr. Menfil!” Kiran regretted that he couldn’t put a Seal of Silence on the attendees of the conference. “Incidentally, the participants died due to the negligence of the attending physicians and the carelessness of a man who is no longer with the company. He was the one who authorized deep immersion!”

“Burned up in a flyer. Ah, what a tragedy!” Menfil said, the irony clear in his voice. “Such a terrible shame, the way his ejection mechanism locked up at the worst possible moment.”

“You seem better informed than me,” Kiran said, barely holding back his anger and using all his strength to keep a calm smile on his face. “Please, come out where everyone can see you.”

Wheels squeaked across the carpeted floor. What Kiran had taken to be an ordinary chair was actually a wheelchair. Rolling to the center of the hall, it stood before Jackson.

“What happened?” he asked in surprise.

“You aren’t much good at faking surprise, Jackson.”

Kiran didn’t realize right away that Menfil’s scratchy voice now resounded only in his head — the new communicator allowed one to speak selectively to those nearby, preventing others from hearing the conversation.

“My flyer suddenly lost control and caught fire yesterday. Do you happen to know why? The ejection mechanism kicked in, but it spat me right into the wall of a skyscraper, because the flyer was spanning so fast it was impossible to tell up from down. It’s a miracle I survived. I’m sure you know more about that than I do. Isn’t that so, Jackson?”

Kiran frowned and moved his lips, hoping that the communicator would convey his threatening tone:

“Careful, Arto! I advise you think twice before you keep talking! I have no idea what happened to you!”

Menfil looked him up and down contemptuously, then suddenly laughed and spread his hands, turning to the others:

“I was in an accident yesterday. I broke both my legs! The bones regrew, but the doctors recommended I stay off my feet for at least a day, so I’m in a wheelchair. But I couldn’t miss this meeting.”

He was cheered and wished a fast recovery. Menfil nodded, but when he raised his head, his smile was gone. Now the a tired old man pinned them with his piercing gaze — all sharp cheekbones, wrinkles, sunken cheeks and dark circles beneath his eyes.

“For those who don’t know me, which is almost all of you… My name is Arto Menfil. Since Snowstorm’s founding, I have led the Optimization project. Its ultimate goals are linked to Pilgrim, but it was intended as a plan B. Nobody believed that it would ever come to launching Optimization. We all put our hopes in Pilgrim…”

Menfil closed his eyes, said nothing for some time.