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Path of Darkness
Glory of Formation Emperor Book 1
A.P. Gore
Patricia Jones
To my lovely Family!
Copyright @ A.P. Gore/Patricia Jones
ISBN: 9781671970625
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Epilogue
Prologue
The worn-out gray corbodide pike hit the black growth spread over the rough cave wall, sending a clinking sound through the whole cave. Three more noisy clinks echoed around him as three other men hit the hard crystal surface with their own pikes.
Drenched in sweat, Jon stopped at the hundredth hit and glanced over his shoulder at the small metal container lying behind him. It was only half full, and that meant four more hours of hard work. Then he gawked at the three other miners; their containers were only a quarter full. His progress was nothing to brag about, but the others would take at least seven more hours to fill their daily quota. None of them were used to hard labor in their outside life, and that slowed their speed here.
Rubbing his hand along the smooth corbodide handle, he stepped away from the black growth and pulled a water bottle from his backpack. His eyes fell on his tattered gray jeans and corbodide shoes, and felt a tug in his stomach. Only his corbodide shoes and mask resisted the corrosive odor of the black growth, not his blue T-shirt, hair, or exposed skin. He would have to apply for a new set of clothes this weekend, and the stinky warden would again complain about their consumption.
Pushing the mask up on his head, he sipped from the bottle. The fresh water rushed through his throat, easing his unsettled stomach. That morning’s shitty soup had been too stinky to swallow. But as soon as the cold sensation faded, the foul smell of the black growth hit him hard.
However, after years spent inside the mines, he had gotten used to it and the corrosive effects it had on a human body. When he came here, he had long black hair, and now only the memory of it remained. In the distant past, the warden had passed out helmets and full-body corbodide suits, but after the prison was repurposed to house only death-sentenced convicts, he stopped handing them out. After all, who would use expensive suits on convicts sent here for only one purpose? To die working in the mines.
Jon sighed—a deep sigh—but without regret. That man had to die, and Jon had actually prevented trouble for many girls by killing him.
“Sav!” A shout pulled him from his thoughts.
Turning, he found a small rat like creature had latched on to one of his fellow inmates neck.
This was bad.
Lunging, he swiped his pike at the small black creature called Carborats by other inmates. It looked like a rat, but it would be an insult to normal rats if he called these bloody, carnivorous creatures rats. They may have looked like large rats, but the similarities ended there. Long sharp teeth that could pierce through any metal other than corbodide was their signature thing. They were but one of the many creatures who lived in the Aminiam mines, feeding on the black Aminiam crystals.
The rat squealed as the pike struck it, but it didn’t release the man’s neck.
Jon took another swing, but the man abruptly dropped to the ground, and the rat vanished inside his body without leaving any blood back. It had sucked it all.
Two men in dark gray full-body corbodide suits rushed in. They each held a M257, the latest firearm made for the Aminiam mines and the creatures that lived inside them.
“Get back!” They pointed their baby-fist-sized gun at the man’s body and blasted his head.
The head exploded in tiny pieces of flesh and bones.
Jon gasped. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a cave-mate die, but each time it left him gasping for breath. Someday, it would be him, getting blown away by a prison guard in an impenetrable suit.
“Jon, let’s go.” Peter, his cellmate, grabbed Jon’s hand and container. A creature attack meant the cessation of the day’s work, and concession in the week’s quota. Everyone enjoyed it, because they got a day of leisure. However, it was ironic. Every time a creature attacked, someone died, and his prison-mates celebrated their day off.
What a bullshit human nature.
Grabbing his container from Peter’s hand, Jon followed him outside the mine and into the storage room where they dropped their harvested crystals.
“Jon, you’ve got the highest quota, as usual.” A worker who collected the harvest flashed him a smile from behind his glass helmet. Even the workers got a corbodide suit, while the prisoners didn’t.
Jon scowled. “Thanks.” He didn’t feel like being polite, but he said it anyway.
“The warden wants to see you. Stop by his office after you wash up,” the worker said.
The tug in his stomach doubled. The warden was a whiny creature. Whenever he called someone to his office, that person suffered from a long lecture and sometimes an increase in quota.
After a chilly shower, he changed into his orange prisoner’s jumpsuit and walked to the warden’s office. With the advanced weaponry and drones watching everyone at every corner, the prison had only few guards and normal workers in it. After all, people didn’t like working on mining planets. The whole atmosphere there tended to be gloomy.
Instead of the heavyset warden, he found a man dressed in a white suit and trendy circular glasses waiting for him in the warden’s office. Glasses was a strange fashion choice in the year 4058, but what he could say?
“Jonathan Bacardi.” The man pushed his glasses up his long nose and signaled him to take a seat.
Jon sat, his eyes tracking the stranger’s every movement.
“I don’t have time to waste, so I’ll get straight to the point.” He pushed his glasses back on his base of his nose, any further he would stab his own eyes. “I’m Baltzar, and I want to hire you for farming.”
Jon swallowed hard. “Farming?” Before his arrest and subsequent incarceration, he’d been a farmer. A good one, actually. He’d even held the title of Master Farmer on planet R46.
“Yes, inside BlackFlame online for the remainder of your prison term. Or 28 years, whichever is lower. You can live a free life after that, and I�
��ll also offer you twenty thousand chips for your work upfront.”
Again, Jon swallowed hard. Twenty thousand chips. That was amazing. With that money, his daughter Kiara could live a comfortable life for at least ten years.
“Did you say BlackFlame online? Isn’t that an MMORPG?”
Baltazar smiled. “Yes. I want you to farm for me in the game. But it’s as good as living a real life. Ten percent of the galaxy’s population spend at least twelve hours in that game, daily. So, it’s a second life for humanity.”
“But...” Jon rubbed his two-day-old beard. How could he enter and live in a game for twenty-eight years?
Chapter 1
Everyone walked in through a mysterious white door, entering a huge white room. In front of a glass screen, hundreds of chairs were lined up, neatly placed in twenty chairs per line. If there wasn’t a tinge of light reflecting from the corners, Jon wouldn’t have recognized the end of one wall and the start of a new one. The result was a visual illusion of an unending wall.
The air smelled like nothing. Strange. Jon was used to smelling something in the air, like the soil on his farm smelled like Phosphorus, while Helena’s farm next to his smelled like cattle dung. She mixed too much manure in her soil as a natural fertilizer, but it f-ked up her mineral balance, and—in the end—she’d ended up selling the farm when it stopped producing. Too bad for her.
The people in front of him moved in a single file line and sat on the chairs one by one. No one so much as skipped a seat. Jon had the urge to sit in the back, but his life wasn’t in his hands anymore, so he followed the horde and sat on a chair when his turn came.
There was a loud clap, and everyone’s gazes jumped to the front of the room. A white platform appeared and then Baltazar walked through a black rectangular ring, like a portal.
“Welcome, inmates.” He clapped again and then pushed his glasses up his long pointy nose. He wore a dark blue suit with matching trousers and a tie over a white shirt, something out of fashion for the forty-first century.
Everyone nodded, including Jon. Baltazar, the man who’d gotten everyone out of prison, was their savior.
Tapping on an invisible screen, he lit the big display behind him with colorful images and a logo, the logo of BlackFlame Online.
“Welcome to BlackFlame Online. I wish you all a happy life in the game for the next hundreds of years.”
Everyone gasped. Though they knew it would be the case, accepting it was a different thing.
Baltazar tapped his hands against his thighs while pacing around the platform. “I won’t take up too much of your time before we dive in, but I’m required to brief you on the basic conditions of our agreement, one last time. First, your bodies are safely secured in our facilities in the immersive pods.”
A picture of his own naked body attached to multiple wires and immersed inside a pod filled with blue liquid flashed through Jon’s mind. Glancing at his in-game body, Jon wondered how many features he had retained in the game. His muscular body looked the same, so that was good. He couldn’t see anything above the shoulders, of course, but there wasn’t much he’d change about himself. Maybe that pesky corroded skin on his neck from his labors in the mine.
Baltazar continued, “In BlackFlame Online, time works on a 1:12 ratio. That’s one month in real life for every twelve months in the game. So, you’ll be spending the rest of your prison term inside the game, working for the Laxania Corporation who runs the game. But it wouldn’t be much of an improvement if you were just doing menial labor in the game too, would it?”
Around the room, people nodded. Jon did too.
“So, we’ll reduce the menial work time by half and let you do as you like with the rest of your time—whatever suits your nature. No strings attached.”
Faces brightened, and the inmates clapped loudly. That hadn’t been the terms outlined in their initial meetings, and it was better than anyone expected.
Much better than dying on planet R46 mining Aminiam..
For Jon, it was bittersweet. Thinking about his initial meeting with Baltazar reminded him of his time in prison and why he was there. Thinking about the trial pulled up a whole mess of bad memories, and he hoped his daughter was doing good in the real world. The last time he spoke with Kiara, she was pursuing self-study in magic while working part-time in a pizza shop. The only downside of being in the game was that he wouldn’t be able to see his daughter for a long time—not that he could see her often in the real world. Convicts only got to visit their family once they completed half their sentence. Space travel wasn’t cheap.
Baltazar raised his hand, and everyone stopped clapping. “Now, go through the door on the right.” He pointed, and a door appeared in the wall. “You’ll meet your initiator in the next room, and he’ll send you to your spawn location.”
Jon stared slack-jawed at the door for a moment, then closed his mouth. Though magic was real in their real life, all they could do was to use some elemental magic and a few spells. No one could conjure a door on demand. Jon reminded himself that this was a game, and he’d likely see more surprising things along the way.
One after another, people went through the door. While he waited his turn, Jon imagined a long room filled with people lining up next to a table while a few people registered their names at a time. What he didn’t expect was a small white room with a white table and a man in a black suit sitting behind the table. Jon and the man were the only people in the room.
The man behind the table flashed Jon a smile. His mustache flared in a funny way as his lips curved. “Welcome, Jonathan. Take a seat.” He waved his hand, and a white wooden chair appeared out of thin air.
No more shocks.
Jon sat, enjoying the soft cushion covering the seat. At least this chair was softer than the one in the previous room. If they were doing this in the game, why didn’t they just have recliners for everyone?
“So, man. Are you ready to spend your 342 years farming in the game?”
“342 years?” Jon swallowed. Was he kidding?
Chapter 2
The man in the suit furrowed his brows. Resting his hands on the table, he leaned forward and met Jon’s eyes. “Is there a problem, Jonathan?”
Jon lowered his gaze. “Mr. ...?”
“Call me Devon.” The man with the mustache flashed an intimidating smile, his slightly yellow teeth reflecting hidden dim light in the room. But when he opened his mouth, Jon smelled coffee—something he loved and hadn’t had for two long years.
“Mr. Devon.” Jon shifted in his chair, resting his hands on the soft armrests. “I only have thirty years left on my prison term.”
“Did Baltazar forget to tell you about the time dilution ratio? Fucking tool.” Devon growled and spat on the floor.
Cringing, Jon pushed his chair back slightly.
“Okay, pissy. Listen carefully. I’m only going to say this once.” Devon’s bloodshot eyes bored into Jon.
Jon stiffened in his chair.
“The game’s time ratio is 1:12. One month in real life is twelve months in the game. So, thirty years comes to three hundred sixty years in the game. Since you’ve got...” His fingers moved as if typing quickly, but Jon saw nothing. “28.58 years left on your sentence. That comes to three hundred forty-three years in the game. You farm for one hundred seventy years, and after that you’re free to do whatever you want.” He squinted. “Wait. Sorry, you actually have to do all three hundred forty-three years.”
Relief flooded Jon at first, but then it vanished like a drop of rain in the desert. “Why? Baltazar said we only need to work half the time.” How could their conditions change from one room to the next?
“That’s because farmers can only work seasonally, for about six months out of the year. The remaining six months are free to fuck off. If not for the half term, you would have corroded your ass for six hundred eighty-six years in there. Got it?” A smug smile appeared on Devon’s face.
Jon arched his brows and opened hi
s mouth to respond. But what could he say? His life wasn’t in his hands anymore. Anything was better than mining in dark corridors for some weird crystal shit that could kill him any time.
Tapping the space behind his ear, Jon nodded. “Okay.”
Devon smirked—the sort of smirk one gets when he knows the opposite person is totally under his control.
“So, here are the terms:
1) As a farmer, you don’t get a class. You only get a utility class, Formationist, along with the starter kit. This kit allows you to grow the weed in your farm.
2) You can level up, but you need to kill monsters, and you can’t do that with basic stats. Still, you can increase your stats by doing hard work. The game provides plenty of that.
3) The weed crop you grow is harvested every week. Once you turn it in at the outpost, you’ll get rations for the week and some copper. Make sure you protect it, or else you get nada.
4) If you die, you’ll spawn in the outpost shrine, but don’t die too often or you’ll spawn in the main city that’s five hundred miles away from the outpost, and you must walk back on foot.” He typed once more on his invisible screen. “Walking takes two weeks, and you may die of starvation on the road and end up respawning in the city temple again. So, don’t die too frequently.” He winked.
Puzzled, Jon stared at Devon. What the heck was this? Wasn’t Devon supposed to teach him how to play the game? Though he’d spent ten hours reading and learning the basics of BlackFlame Online when Baltazar first contacted him, he was still unsure about many things, so he needed some answers.
“Do you have any questions, or you want to jump into the game right away?”
“Wait.” Jon raised his palm to stop Devon from speaking. “Tell me more about these stats and the six months’ free time.” Those six months interested him a lot. Being a farmer was a a blessing and a curse. He wouldn’t have to work for one hundred seventy years and then get his freedom. Instead, he would work for six months and enjoy his freedom for the next six months.
Devon rose from his chair. “Pissy, I don’t have time for your stupid questions. Ask someone who’s there already. And take this.” He waved his hand, and a small purse appeared out of the air. “This is your Bag of Holding. Once you put something inside, no one can steal it from you. Got it?” He threw the bag at Jon.