Chương 60: It jumps! It hovers! It shrinks! It grows! It glistens!

It hovers! It shrinks! It grows! It glistens!

George limped over to the dolphin jet ski and reread its description. <The Missing Dolphin Seat> <Description: This dolphin seat was created for the carousel in the food court in the Columbia Mall, where it delighted children with its playful visage and inviting-yet-dated paint job from 1993 to 2004. In a surprising turn of events, the carousel was summoned through dimensional space in order to participate in this trial.

The dolphin seat's odyssey took another unexpected turn when a portal opened in its exact position, shearing the dolphin seat away from its customary spot between the gorilla-jeep and the ostrich-cycle and sending it on the last leg of its wild, wild journey. It was suddenly adrift in trans-portal sub-space with nothing but the as-yet-unaware denizens of the Ink for company.

Its story would have ended, had not the Hell For Leather room—never one to miss an opportunity to add a new vehicle to its fleet—snapped it up, dusted it off, and got it ready for action. Now, the Missing Dolphin Seat has been retrofitted with the latest bells and whistles for the modern adventurer and is ready to frolic in the fickle waves of fate once again. Features: Hover; Wavejump Abilities: Pocket Rocket; Thanks For All The Fish>"Pal, how do I choose another vehicle?" George asked.

"Simply enter the vehicle and five prestige tokens will be deducted from your total," the floating robot answered. >>Nod, are you sure that riding this to that armory in the spaceship room is the best use of our time? >>Better than sitting on the floor in this garage bemoaning your fate? Yes. >>Do I know the full inventory of the armory and what will happen when we arrive? Not exactly. >>But at the very least, we need to take that dolphin to the nodling because it is truly stranded.

It ain't getting out of that room alone. You'll see why when we get there. George sighed as he looked at the dolphin.

"So I just get on and go?" George said. >>Presumably, you'll get that "I know Kung Fu" knowledge upgrade when you mount up. George sighed again and said, "It could be worse, I guess." >>I'm not sure how that is true, but way to stay positive! >>At least it has that nice sparklebright sheen. >>Cassie is going to flip out when she sees this. Our interdimensional pre-teen sidekick isn't ready for Lisa Frank. George walked over and saw a key fob lying on the seat.

He picked it up, slipped it into his pocket, and threw one leg over the dolphin's back with a groan. As soon as he put his hands on the handlebars, a flurry of notifications appeared. Deducted: 5 prestige tokens (66 total) <The Missing Dolphin Seat Ability + Feature Package> Hover: Float above the ground. Wavejump: Engage a jump boost to carry vehicle over obstacles. Pocket Rocket: Shrink to keychain size with a triple click on the accessory key fob. Another triple-click causes vehicle to return to its normal size.

Thanks For All The Fish: Passive boost to intelligence stat (if unlocked). Notification: Celestial Library Inception Event Neon Dream Wave Dancer skill package unlocked Advanced facility with the Missing Dolphin Seat unlocked >>And suddenly the Missing Dolphin Seat became too good to ever return to the Hell For Leather room. (Sorry, Pal.) >>It jumps! It hovers! It shrinks! It grows! It glistens! >>George, you just bought yourself a permanent driveable dolphin keychain.

That Pocket Rocket ability opens up so many possibilities. We are stealing this jet ski FOR SURE. >>This is really going to crimp the "mirror-faced ninja" style you got going on. Shucks… just when your look was starting to turn around. >>But, at least we are in the same boat. It isn't really my style either. My preferred look is matte black stealth paint with tasteful red "blood of my enemies" accents… >>But in a crisis like this, we all must tighten our belts and make sacrifices.

Just as it had with the car, the knowledge of how to drive the hover jet ski flowed into him. George pushed a black button on the center of the seat between his legs—which he now knew was called the saddle—and the jet ski hummed to life. He leaned slightly, and it floated forward.

"Bye, Pal," George said.

"Thanks for the jet ski."

"Very good, sir," the floating robot said.

"I shall tell Morat that you chose to explore the track with another vehicle. Wait… where are you going?" George guided the jet ski toward the back wall where he'd entered the room. There was a row of five portals. He could see a row of shelves through the bookstore portal he'd come through earlier. Another of the portals showed a scene of a park at sunset with the rubble of destroyed buildings visible in the distance. One of the other portals was completely black.

Through another, he could see the arm of a large machine pistoning back and forth. The final portal showed a strobe light flashing on an empty, darkened dance floor. >>Which portal is it, Nod? >>Second from the right. Straight on till morning.

"Sir, the vehicles of the Hell For Leather room must stay in the Hell For Leather room. I must insist! It isn't—" Pal's sentence was cut off when George gunned the throttle and the dolphin seat surged through the portal. Entering Hunting Room: The Sons of Rest Pavilion, Tower Grove Park. St. Louis, Autumn 2039 Danger Level: • Medium: Act I • Extreme: Act II Room Description: The area around Tower Grove Park is a near perfect sample of postapocalyptic urban America in the late 2030s. This recreation of southern St.

Louis is strewn with simmering threats in Act I that boil over into an all-out battle in Act II. >>It is about a quarter mile to the portal, then a half mile up one of the streets. The portal to the room we need is in the doorway to a house. I'm putting the route on your visor. Just follow the line. >>I don't know who won the war in this part of the world: the robots or the aliens… but I don't really want to find out. Get moving. George sped into a rolling field dotted with undergrowth.

It was overgrown, and the city at the edge of the park looked half destroyed. The ground was pocked with craters, as if something had crashed there or burst up from the soil. Many of the houses were reduced to rubble, and the rest looked like no one had lived there for a decade. The small yards along the streets were being reclaimed by the gardens that used to decorate them. Even the houses that were still standing sported broken windows and the occasional caved-in roof.

George was glad he wasn't driving something with wheels. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. In a minute, they were out of the park, and the line in George's visor turned up a broken street riddled with the same small craters that had broken the soil in the park. As they passed one of the cross streets, George glanced to his left and saw a shambling, stained figure walking down the middle of the street.

George was moving too fast to do more than register the zombie before it vanished from sight. >>Uh oh. That's not great. >>What? >>Believe it or not, that was one of the zombies from the mall. That super spreader effect is starting to escalate. >>Are you sure? >>Yeah... unless there are other reasons why someone would be walking around this neighborhood in 2039 dressed in clothes from the 90s with a big black vomit stain on his shirt. >>And there is a mall portal in a dog park a few blocks away.

>>It is good these rooms are as huge as they are. If they weren't, we'd already be waist-deep in slimes, zombies, and vordigans, probably. >>But I guess we have that to look forward to in Act II. George followed the line in his visor as he turned the jet ski at an intersection. The jetski controls felt as natural to him as the Mustang had, and he hardly had to slow down as he leaned into the turn and curved around the corner. >>There's our portal.

George slowed as they neared a small house with a green portal shining in the doorway where a door should have been. The houses on this street were all built with terraced yards and short stairs leading up to the front porches. George nosed the dolphin to the bottom of the cement stairs and throttled gently up the incline. He leaned far forward over the front of the jet ski to maintain his center of balance. He didn't have to think about the movement; his body knew what to do. >>Go through this portal slowly.

It spits you out at the top of a giant staircase in that old manor house where we met Cassie. The portal to the next room is around a corner at the bottom of the stairs. It isn't always open, but if we time it right, we'll only be in the manor house for a minute. George hovered the dolphin seat slowly through the portal. As he passed through, the green sparks briefly illuminated the top of an ornate stained glass window that spanned the height of the three-story staircase.

Candlelight flickered in sconces that followed the path of the stairs downward. The rest of the house was dark and quiet. Entering Hunting Room: The Manor House Danger Level: • Low: Act I. • Low: Act II Room Description: First mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as a possession of William the Conqueror, the Manor House served as the regional seat in Southern Hampshire. It was situated in the English countryside for centuries and served as a stately pleasure retreat from London's crowds and coal smoke.

However, in the first half of the 21st century, it was acquired by Yog Doddon of the Null Crown, and brought to dimensional space (along with surrounding countryside). Today, it is used primarily as a staging ground in trials that require a certain touch of Old World color or haunted-house flair. As George read the new description, the same disembodied, feminine voice from the house speakers announced his entrance, "George Brandiss, level twenty-one crafter. Entering The Manor House."

The staircase was steep, wide, and dotted with landings at each corner. It encircled a wide open atrium in the middle of the large stairwell that reached to the ground floor. George was about to lean forward and ride the dolphin seat down the stairs when he heard a chittering sound in the darkness below. Ability Notification! Threat Level 3 Knickknack Savant - Level 5 >>What was that? >>It sounded like an animal.

The chittering sound came again, but this time, it seemed to come from the shadows in the corner of the high ceiling. The dolphin seat started to drift forward, and George leaned back to hold position on the top landing. >>I… have a bad feeling about this. Ability Notification! Threat Level 4 Knickknack Savant - Level 8 Something hissed farther down on the staircase. George bent his head to look over the railing and saw a black shape slither away from a wall sconce and back into the shadows.

>>Identify, show me the vordigans in this room. George's visor was filled with twenty or thirty translucent white lines slowly moving higher up the stairwell along the walls. One line even revealed a silent clot of shadow crawling across the high ceiling above his head. >>I have an idea. >>This is a Knickknack Savant idea? >>Doesn't matter. Whatever it is, the answer is yes. >>And fast. >>Preferably before the creature crawling toward us on the ceiling is directly above our head. >>Time is about to slow down.

I'm going to activate the Pocket Rocket ability on the dolphin seat and jump over the railing. Then, you get us down to the ground floor, and we get the hell out of here. More chittering echoed up the stairs, and the tracer lines in his visor revealed that the vordigans were starting to increase their pace up the walls. George slid his hand into his pocket, slowly withdrew the key fob. >>Ready?

George hit the button on the key fob three times, and the dolphin beeped, instantly shrank into a keychain, and fell to the floor. George's feet hit the ground at the same moment the vordigan on the ceiling let out a whistling scream and launched itself down at him. [Combat Initiated] Ability Notification!

Threat Level 5 Knickknack Savant - Level 13 Time Dilation Maximum: x 200% The vordigan's leap slowed to half speed, and George reached up to punch it away with his hand, but it was still faster than he could handle. Its mouth stretched unnaturally wide before clamping down on his gauntlet. Its wiry legs latched onto his arm, while its long, black tail stabbed and flailed at his helmet. He could see more of them coming up the stairwell, passing in and out of the candlelight as they scampered up the walls.

Ability Notification! Threat Level 6 Knickknack Savant - Level 21 Time Dilation Maximum: x 400% >>Nod! Nod's hand whipped across his body and withdrew Cassie's sword, snapping it into blade form in one smooth movement. He jabbed it three times into the vordigan's body in quick succession, and the creature released George's hand and screamed. This seemed to drive the others into a frenzy, and the stairway filled with shrill, piercing sounds.

Nod took the vordigan's head off with another swipe, and George flung its body off his hand. >>Code Venom! George threw himself over the railing and felt himself falling at one-quarter speed. He cast draw on the dolphin keychain. As soon as the keychain touched his hand, he threw it straight down toward the ground floor. Nod let them drop for a heartbeat before snapping the light grapple onto the ceiling above.

Most of the vordigans still hadn't realized George had jumped into the open center of the stairwell instead of taking the stairs. The lightrope hissed through Nod's grip as he fed out slack and slowed their descent. George clicked the key fob again. The dolphin keychain struck the ground floor and instantly expanded back into a full-sized jetski. A few feet above the floor, Nod severed the rope. George hit the ground running, lunged onto the dolphin seat, and gunned the throttle. >>Line!

The route to the next portal appeared in George's visor. He sped forward around a tight corner, down a hall, and around another corner. The dolphin seat skimmed over a vordigan racing along the ground, and another one launched itself from the ceiling at him, but it was too slow and hit the ground behind him as the jet ski shot forward. >>Portal! George surged through the portal and emerged into an immense flat plane of white, hard-packed dust under a white sky.

He could see the green rectangles of portals scattered across the plane. Entering Hunting Room: The Cul-De-Sac of Broken Hearts Danger Level: • Low: Act I. • High: Act II Room Description: Like the proverbial monkey trap, entering the Cul-De-Sac of Broken Hearts is easier than leaving. The only features of this extended plane are the portal entrances and exits that flash on and off at intervals. The longest portals are open for several minutes; the shortest, a scant handful of seconds.

Since the Cul-De-Sac features portals connecting to all the other rooms in the hunting maze, it tends to collect players and environmental elements, especially in the latter half of the trial. As such, the room has the potential to become a grisly battleground, mitigated only by its immense size. As George took in the landscape around him, he could see some of the portals winking out of existence, while others popped open elsewhere. A few of the portals were nearby, but most weren't. >>Holy shit. That was a rush!

>>Your ability is awesome. I love it. >>Let's do that again sometime. George steered the dolphin seat in a wide arc around the portal he had just come through and saw that vordigans were pouring out of it. Some were scurried after him while others were buried beneath a growing pile of the creatures building up in front of the portal.

The scrum was the result of vordigans on this side of the portal trying to retreat back into the darkened manor house even as more leaped through the portal to enter the cul-de-sac room. Each vordigan was about the size of a small dog. They moved like lizards across the ground with those long, barbed tails whipping freely like angry snakes. They were matte black and covered in scaled chitin. >>There are so many of them.

>>Those vordigans are all sitting there in the shadows and waiting for the house to announce anyone who comes in. >>It is a death trap. >>It's genius. >>And scary as hell. >>Let's get going. 14: 01 left in our special, private hunting round. Nod plotted a new route in George's visor and he brought the jet ski up to full speed. It shot forward on the flat ground of the hunting room, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. [Combat Resolved]