Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (detective books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Phenomenal Pen
Book online «Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (detective books to read TXT) 📗». Author Phenomenal Pen
Once again, the Nidhoggr had the look of a pug that was choking on something. It swayed like a rope bridge after its suspension cables had snapped. Elf tried to maintain her balance on the saddle but after a backward sway, the dragon pitched forward, downward and… exploded.
Even as the dragon slapped against the ground, it transformed into gold coins. A whole lot of them. A king’s ransom or, more precisely, a dragon’s weight in gold. Elf found herself riding a sculpture of coins glued together with spit, disengaging as they hit the ground, scattering in all directions and making a deafening jangle. The next thing she knew she was gently back on solid ground, squatting over a saddle on a carpet of coins. Three-dimensional letters that spelled “619 GOLD” appeared a foot above the fortune and then vanished just as swiftly.
A hush had settled on all the questers as the coins made their final soft clinks.
“WE DID IT!!!” Blacksmith screamed, throwing both fists in the air and jumping for joy.
Ranger followed with a whoop and then Warrior started doing some victory dance, totally spontaneous and quite unbecoming of someone his size. The only ones who didn’t show any sign of jubilation were Mage and Elf, the second because she was still too shocked to feel anything.
“Guys, look…” Warrior whispered in astonishment. As everyone turned to him, they saw a slim tape that floated at the same level as the berserker’s ankles. It announced like a 360-degree, revolving LED news ticker: ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ADRENALINE RUSH.
“Whoa…” everyone mumbled. The phenomenon was similar to what Elf and Blacksmith had experienced.
The ribbon vanished after a couple more seconds.
“Waitwaitwait!” Blacksmith said. “Where’s the Orc?”
“There is no need for concern,” Mage reassured them.
The old man was one step ahead of all of them and had stridden to where the Orc rider had fallen. Now he was crouching over something suggestive of a chalk outline in a crime scene but filled with a smaller heap of coins. “The Orc took a spill from which he never rose. This was a drone type, which is to say that its fate was linked to that of its mount; till death.”
Mage looked like a medieval detective after producing a long-stem pipe of an unknown weed from deep within the wide sleeves of his robe. He was puffing thoughtfully on it while poking through the coins with his staff. He revealed the Orc’s horn trumpet from underneath.
“A branch node,” he said musingly.
“Um, that looks like a horn, not a branch,” Elf said as she walked – trudged – through all the coins to where Mage was inspecting the loot. She was peering over Mage’s shoulder.
Blacksmith was sucking all the shiny treasure into his charmed satchel. He was bent over and pointing the mouth around like a very powerful vacuum cleaner and every coin in its path was instantly swept inside, but the satchel didn’t put on any weight or bulk.
“That’s gaming jargon,” Blacksmith explained. “A branch node a.k.a. internal node. It means a structure that contains a condition or leads to a tree of its own.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Ranger asked.
Blacksmith was at a loss what to say next. He wasn’t exactly sure where his particular piece of knowledge came from and where it led.
“Does anyone have any recollection of the Lord Thorne?” Mage asked without looking or getting up.
“Nope,” Elf said. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Never heard that name before in my entire…”
Like a dazzling firefly alighting and then taking off, déjà vu visited Elf’s brain. And from the looks of the other questers, theirs as well.
Elf winced and shivered.
“This world doesn’t follow the physics of the surface world,” Mage said. “On the surface world, a royal retinue travelling at 20 kilometers per day is bound to cross paths with us in Birkwood Forest. But because this Orc drone failed to blow his horn, there will be no Lord Thorne and goblin party passing by us. In fact, it is highly unlikely there will be an Orc-Goblin alliance in this particular game tree.”
“An alternate reality,” Blacksmith said to himself.
“All that for failing to blow a sounding horn,” Ranger said. “How do you know all these?”
“I see very differently than you,” Mage answered. He had finally risen from where he crouched and, for the briefest moment, his eyes appeared to glint from within his hood. “Where you see a sounding horn, I see position and sacrifice, moves and counter-moves, programs and patterns.”
“Is that so?” Ranger asked. “Then can you teach us a cheat or a shortcut out of this mess?”
“My prime directive is to assist all of you in exiting SKYE with optimal safety and efficiency. There are no ways to circumvent the system, if that is what you are referring to. But trust that I have analyzed the farthest levels of the game tree from our current position using Minimax algorithms.” Turning to Ranger, he added: “It is actually quite similar to how you plot your ascent routes along a saddle or a col.”
“From our current position,” Ranger repeated. “You mean, one way to beat the game is to cover as much ground as possible?”
Comments (0)