Allisium

Chapter 19

Adalbert wrapped himself in a reddish magical cloak before crashing into the mass of Allsionista.

As far”fetched as it seemed, no one could take even one more step.

Some of the enraged ones slipped away and ran forward, where Tifa and Auron were waiting for them, although they never got too close, as they fell to the ground from an accurate shot to the head.

Kinneas the sniper never missed a shot.

The central mass was still unable to advance, as Adalbert had managed to get rid of several dozen of them with just the push of his force. It didn't take them long to get past him; he was of great build, but impossible to completely encompass that great alley. His immediate reaction was to draw two broadswords as the mob tried to advance.

It looked like he was going to try something before they beat him.

“Second act! he bellowed.

"My, now he wants to show off," Kinneas snapped with a cluck.

Adalbert began to spin at breakneck speed, holding both swords in the shape of a cross. The Allsionistas, dispossessed of their weapons and with their bodies half”naked, watched as they were mercilessly lacerated and sliced. It was a hideous sight, limbs and limbs leaping and crashing into the alley walls and liters of blood spraying as Adalbert advanced. He did it without haste but without pause, interspersed with the howls of madness and pain that the Allsionistas uttered.

A work not suitable for sensitive stomachs.

Dozens and dozens of Allsionistas have perished since those four geeks had set to work. The Allsionistas, some regaining consciousness and seeing that they had little to do going there, turned and fled. Kinneas hunted down some, who were always fatally shot in the head; Tifa and Auron watched the show sitting in the fountain, where I found them, as if their participation was no longer necessary. And the tin knight, his armor covered in Afronist blood, could do without them and managed without any problems.

When Adalbert stopped turning, he found before his eyes a two meter high mound full of dismembered bodies. The tin soldier was stained with blood, like the deathbringer he had become. The alley looked the same color, a dunghill of corpses and scattered limbs that gave off a terrible stench that began to spread throughout the city. I suppressed my retching and tried to cover my nose so as not to spill it all.

I hadn't realized it, but I was shaking. And not with fear, but with excitement.

That's what Dagon, Greek and I could become. They were way ahead of us, but it was the way we had to go. These geeks were several rungs above the rest and I'm sure by now they were already receiving notifications for having completed general missions of rank A or S. Missions that ranged from killing an indecent number of people to getting a certain number of deaths by shooting. in the head. They were hidden missions that nobody knew about, but that the system was in charge of rewarding when they occurred, thus constituting a pleasant surprise for the adventurers.

I was so stunned that I didn't even hear the noise of a motorbike with huge wheels, perfect for arid and difficult terrain, appearing at full speed in the square.

It was Gina.

Getting off her, she put her hand to her nose, took out a handkerchief from her inventory and covered herself with it. The stench of blood and death dulled the senses.

"What the hell happened here?" was the first thing he asked.

"I'm not sure you'll believe me," I replied with a shaky voice as I got up from the ground.

“This is disgusting. He frowned. How many people have died?

“People? I replied. They were murderers, they're better off dead.

"It's been a while, huh?"

"If it wasn't for them," I said, pointing at those four, "I'd be dead by now."

He looked at the peculiar group and frowned.

"What are they doing here?"

They also looked at her, but it was Tifa who spoke.

"Wow, Gina, you over here... have you decided to join the clan yet?"

I stayed like an idiot. He looked at them, remembering what he had witnessed. Then I looked back at Gina, wondering what would it take for her to have a group like this ask her to join them.

Be that as it may, that girl was a box of surprises.

"Have I missed something?" was all I could say.

Adalbert, Kinneas, Tifa and Auron were the names of some of the most powerful characters in the Final Fantasy saga . They had not chosen those names lightly, nor did they forget to dress just like them. Even their abilities imitated what the heroes of one of the most influential video game sagas in history excelled at.

Adalbert was the warrior who protected others with his strength and swordsmanship; Kinneas was the sharpshooter, an expert in firearms of all kinds; Tifa was the expert in martial arts, her fists and agility made the difference, and Auron had great power and incredible abilities. The four of them together made a great team, but best of all, there would be many more in his clan; as many as charismatic characters had the saga.

That certainly made them one of the best clans in Allsium.

And apparently they had invited Gina to join them. I didn't know how anyone could despise such an offer, but the redhead didn't see that clan with the same eyes that I did.

"Why do you reject them?" “I asked for.

We were riding his motorcycle, that thing sounded like a huge fan, but it was quite quiet for the power it had. It could go over two hundred an hour, so we were away from the Initium capital in a matter of seconds, leaving behind a war that was still claiming thousands and thousands of victims in its labyrinthine Zen streets.

Those four geeks had said goodbye to us shortly after Gina had turned them down, according to Kinneas, for the twenty”seventh time.

I could'nt believe it.

"I'm not interested in teaming up with a bunch of freaks." It's not that I don't like videogames, I love that videogame saga, but I'm not going to lose my essence for them. Her reddish hair fluttered in the wind. In addition, I do not seek to share my benefits with so many people.

He had called them a clan of freaks, the best of Allsium. That girl was crazy. And on top of that, he spoke of essence, as if it were important to preserve it in virtuality, where we were all going to lose it to become another person. We wished we could, forget about real life, or at least not and return to it to rise above the rest.

But she seemed to be above all that.

“What are you looking for here?

"In Allsium?" Entertain me," he replied unconvincingly. You ask some very strange questions, hasn't anyone told you?

No girl, that's for sure.

“Entertainment? This is not a video game, you know?

"Oh, right? And who says so?" You're not one of those idiot Allsionistas, are you?

“No, I am not an Afronista, although I believe that Allsium is the future. It was more than that, but I didn't want to dwell on it too much either.

"So you're a social offal, huh?"

That girl was tactless and there was no sign that she had ever met him in her life. It was the female version of Greek.

Gone was an immense capital whose buildings did not stop emanating threads of dark gray smoke. If the planet was already depressing in itself, that image was deplorable, the living stamp of the war and its tragic consequences. We would wait for official data to know exactly how many adventurers had lost their lives in Initium that day. Tens, hundreds, thousands... Afronism was dangerous and for the first time it had been unleashed, causing a historical event that would mean the beginning of something very big in all of virtuality.

The Allsionistas roamed freely through illegality, while the non”Allsionists had the virtual Earth to protect themselves from them. You had to remember that in the Land of Allsium you couldn't enter combat mode anywhere. The system protected the entire virtual blue planet, although it also protected the capital of Initium and it was burning at the time.

"There will never be peace again," Gina said as we stopped near a wood.

“Why do you say that?

“I have many friends, among them there are infiltrators among the Allsionistas.

"I didn't know they were so well organized," I replied.

“Most of them are rich people from the real world who want to control illegality, and if possible continue to get richer. If virtuality bursts, and everything is transferred to the real world, they will be even more powerful. They have created the roll of Afronism to fill the heads of all those idiots who want to be important with stupidities. Power called power. The son of the head of the Allsionista was murdered a few weeks ago in Initium. They're on the trail of the murderer, but from what they tell me, things have gotten complicated. I raised my eyebrow and blinked a few times. The small cell that they maintained in Initium was exterminated, and best of all, it was at the hands of a group of four rookies.

“A group of four rookies…? I asked innocently, trying not to stutter.

“If they say. What irony, the son of the most powerful man in the world murdered by newcomers. My head was spinning and I was starting to gasp for air. It is clear that money in Allsium is not everything. Therein lies the grace of virtuality: anyone can become great starting from scratch. That rich brat shouldn't have gotten out of the safety of virtual Earth, but the kid had big aspirations. Fuck it.

"And what about those four rookies?" My mouth was dry and it was hard for me to pronounce.

“Not much, but without meaning to, they have become the most sought after in Allsium and on the entire internet. The leader of the Allsionistas, they say, offers a lot of money to find them alive and bring them to his presence,” he said with a wry smile. The poor have inadvertently become demons for some and heroes for others.

"And how come they haven't found them yet?" “I heard my heartbeat like war drums, my heart was racing.

"You haven't read the Good Player's Manual, have you?" I wonder how the hell you survived here for so long.

“What are you talking about?

“Everything that has to do with illegal death is immediately erased from the brain when the person affected returns to the real world. You can always go in and out of Allsium to journal every step you take, but since no one knows when you're going to die it's silly and a waste of time. Gina ruffled her reddish hair, which fell to her shoulders in a very sensual way. Nothing has yet been invented that can record what the brain considers a mere dream. There are people who sleep and when they wake up they don't remember anything, right? Well, for the brain, the last hours or days in Allsium are just an impossible dream to remember.

"So no one knows who killed the son of the most powerful man in the world?" I asked trying not to stutter.

"Nobody except the ones who killed him, of course." It has become the most important mystery of the moment,' Gina replied wryly. The virtual stiff family pays astronomical amounts in reality for any good lead that is turned up, so this has become a race to see who can find them first. The Allsionists to deliver them and the non”Allsionists to defend them.

"And no one wonders if it's not better to leave them alone?" I asked looking up at the sky.

I visited the virtual internet and there it was, almost on the front page of any information portal that I visited. I preferred not to return to reality to verify that we were also the talk of the world there.

He was beginning to curse our luck.

Clans were created just to gather information on the fledglings who had killed Adam Leproiner's son. The tycoon, with businesses in the military and arms industry, as well as in many other sectors such as food, technology and a long etcetera, also controlled the vast majority of the world press.

We were crazy if we thought we were going to be able to escape someone like that.

No matter where he looked, the news of the search for the murderers of the son of the richest man in the world always appeared on the front page. It didn't matter if they knew us or not, in the most important forums pages and pages of passionate debate about who would be the murderers were written.

But at least no one knew who we were.

And so it should be.

“What are you thinking about? Gina asked, crossing her arms. You've been quiet for a long time. You will never finish reading all the news on the subject, every minute a new one comes out, and most of it is just smoke. Some say that they have already found them and others even agree to exchange legendary objects for information about them.

"Do you think they'll find them?" “I asked for.

"Sure," she assured raising an eyebrow, as if the thing wasn't with her. That man has power and money to buy whoever he wants. They will find them, but before that we have to do it ourselves.

“Us…?

“Yes, we are fighting the Allsionista, and this is one of the most important crusades ahead of us.

“Sounds like a movie.

Yes, but it is a reality. The Allsionistas prepare for the virtual world and the real world to be one,” she explained, flipping her hair back again in a very sensual way. We don't know how they're going to do it, but we're preparing to defend the real world in case that happens. The only way is by acquiring power illegally, just like they do.

With that simple explanation, our desires vanished.

“What is that face? You're not one of those idiots who comes to Allsium to become more powerful and return to the real world to take revenge for his pathetic past, are you? He almost burst out laughing just looking at my face. Men! He blurted out, shaking his head vehemently. Do you think that becoming powerful is a matter of months? There are people who have been here since Allsium created illegality, you know?

"Well, for some reason you have to go out on adventures, don't you?" I said trying to defend myself.

"My goodness, you're all the same," he huffed and shook his head. I don't know if you know, but Allsium was created fifty long years ago, although the illegality is barely five. You have no idea how powerful a person who has been here so long can be. If for some reason Allsium's powers could be transferred to real life...

“It would be a catastrophe, yes,” I replied, “but we are a long way from that happening.

“It is obvious that you do not listen to the news, or read, or are aware of anything that happens in reality.

“Why do you get like that?

“Because the other day, in Madrid, they arrested a man who had killed three people with a freezing spell.

“How do you know that?

“Two weeks ago,” he continued, ignoring me, “six people were found dead in a New York movie theater completely burned from the inside. It was also the work of a user of the Path of the Wizard.

“And how do you know? I protested. It could have been anything else.

He fixed his poisonous gaze on me and I swallowed hard.

“Two months ago, in Berlin, an entire shopping center was ripped from its foundations and was left in the air for two long minutes. Her eyelids closed and she took a deep breath. After that time, everything fell apart. Thousands of people died.

For that, I no longer had answers.

“The hackfronistas are behind it,” he assured. It's already happening, Gunner, the powers and objects of the virtual world that until now were prohibited have appeared promptly in the real world. We don't know when it will happen, but we must be prepared.

I swallowed. The world was going to shit for idiots like us. If Allsium and real life became one world, war would be imminent.

And only the strongest would dominate the new reality.

“Gunner, I know you haven't been through any Guild Source yet, but you have to soon or all your experience will be gone when this blows up. This caught me off guard, but he was right. With a decent path you will have a chance to defend yourself in the real world.

'My friends are in Tveirland,' I said. They should already be a paladin and assassin, but I don't know how things are over there.

"Now is not the time to worry about them, handsome." His words made me blush. Here we are at war.

I didn't know what to say or what to do. It had slapped me and my lust for power and revenge in the real world. What could I get if I got to the real world and there were millions of people far more powerful than me?

We were a bunch of hopeless newbies and social wrecks, as Gina had rightly said.

"Have you heard that?" Gina asked me suddenly.

I wasn't there to hear anything at that point in the conversation, but voices, footsteps and occasional laughter came. Whoever they were, it seemed that the war was not going with them.

"Don't move," Gina said, getting up quickly.

We were in the gray shadow of the forest where we had come with Gina's motorcycle. She, hearing the footsteps, stretched out on the grass to look over the small bushes that covered us. I couldn't do anything but look at her ass and stretch out next to her afterwards.

It was the group of geeks.

Gina got up and headed towards them, so I followed her. She knew how to walk like few others, waddling her behind in a hypnotic way; a spectacle that did not go unnoticed. I wondered what the hell I was doing thinking of her before my friends.

"How fast you have arrived" was the first thing the redhead said.

"My, Gina, how small Initium is!" Kinneas said, waving with a flick of his beige cowboy hat, matching his long jean coat.

"We have come to rest," Auron explained. He was wearing sunglasses and his arm was in a sling under that fabulous reddish robe, the same one the character he impersonated in Final Fantasy X wore . He exuded charisma everywhere.

"How has the capital been?" “I asked for.

"It's still burning," answered Tifa with a circumstantial face. The Allsionistas have gone too far this time. Thousands of people have died, everything was very well orchestrated.

"Bastards!" Adalbert bellowed. The heavy armor and spiked helmet seemed to be made of tin, just like his character in Final Fantasy IX . We haven't been able to do anything to stop them. Damn!

"Enough, Adalbert," Auron said. This has only just begun. Let's rest, we are at the limit. Gina, if that's okay with you, I'd like to team up for a while.

“How about? Gina asked me.

Team up with the four who had stopped the advance of hundreds of Allsionista with their power and abilities?

"Okay," I said with a shrug.

There was no official data yet, but the missing were counted by the thousands. The capital of Initium, which occupied more than half the total land area of the planet, had been devastated. From the forest where we were, you could see the intense black smoke that the city emanated from any of its corners; Plunged into chaos and instability, from any point on the planet came the stench of burning meat.

Auron and Tifa left their virtual bodies in our care and returned to reality to gather information about what happened.

"When are you going to give me a date, precious?" Kinneas asked Gina.

The redhead looked him up and down for a few seconds and smiled.

“When your Cloud gets the Buster Sword .

Cloud was the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII and wielded the Buster Sword , so the geek clansman who impersonated that hero must be very interested in getting it.

Adalbert laughed.

"When that happens, I'll even give you the appointment myself, cowboy," he replied sarcastically.

"What about the Buster Sword?" “I asked for.

And by the way I opened the inventory to check that it was still there.

"Well, it's legendary," Kinneas replied, "so there can't be another like it in all of Allsium." That is why it is so valuable and that Cloud, our Cloud I mean, finds it hard to find. He has the clan turned upside down, he even pays well for any type of information. To tell you the truth, he's so obsessed with her that he'd kill the sword wielder if he knew who it was.

My heart gave me another bump.

“Oh really? I came to ask.

"I couldn't tell you," answered the cowboy, pulling his ponytail back, "sometimes there are people in the clan who are obsessed with weapons." They are so idiots… they don't seem to know how hard it is to get them. I'll get by with any firearm at hand, I don't care if it's legendary or not.

"I'm not going to waste my time looking for them either," Adalbert replied. But it is true that Cloud has been a bit unbearable lately with the subject.

I stayed a little calmer, although carrying a legendary weapon in the inventory was beginning to be counterproductive. He preferred not to think about the fact that the Buster Sword that his companion craved so much belonged to Dagon. But we had been lucky and we thought we'd keep it, because ours had cost us.

“How strange,” Gina said after a while. It's all too quiet.

"After the storm comes the calm," I commented.

"They couldn't have had the strength to get here," Kinneas said, playing with her ponytail. With everything that has happened in the capital, players will have gone into caves and forests to protect themselves. This planet has nooks and crannies everywhere, it's like it's prepared for something like that.

"You're kidding, aren't you?" “I asked for.

He raised his eyebrow and looked at the rest.

"Allsium is a self”learning system, far exceeding the artificial intelligence of anything invented in the past," Gina explained. Nothing needs to be ruled out. Perhaps a process of natural selection has been created and we are now seeing the results.

"It's fifty years since Patrick Cork, its founder, introduced Allsium to society," Adalbert said, looking up at the gray clouds. It was a system that left behind any social network, video game or attempt at virtual reality. Allsium was everything, perhaps the greatest revolution in our history.

"We weren't born yet," Kinneas said.

"Yeah, that was a great speech," the tin soldier continued. But a year later Cork disappeared and no one knows where it is yet. Some say that he is dead, others that he is waiting on the last planet of illegality, and there are even those who affirm that he is working on another advance that will catapult the human being towards immortality.

"That's bullshit," Gina snapped, raising one of her thin, reddish eyebrows. Patrick Cork stepped back so as not to take away the limelight from Allsium. He said that the system would learn by itself and that in just over forty years it would be capable of creating worlds other than the virtual Earth. Forty”five years later, just five years ago, his words were fulfilled. Allsium learns on his own, but everything goes just as Patrick Cork had planned.

"Who cares where Patrick Cork is now," Kinneas snapped. I still remember the day we all left virtual Earth and came to Initium. People were disappointed to see that the first world was so sad and gray.

"And that you say so," Adalbert replied. But the experience system, quests and paths were introduced, and that made millions of people realize that the future was in Allsium. A place where exceeding human limits and feeling them on our own skin was something we couldn't let go of.

"Magic, money, and adventure, the three great maxims of illegality five years ago," Gina said. Now this is full of Allsionista who intend to hack the system and take advantage of it in real life. I wonder what Patrick Cork will make of all this.

"Maybe he's an Afronist, too," Kinneas snapped.

We all laughed and the conversation stopped there. I was silently grateful for the history lesson, going into the Allsium database and spending hours reading was not part of my plans.

That's how we went.

I needed to know something about Dagon and Greek, it had been too long since we parted ways. He hoped that Tveirland hadn't collapsed, as Initium had.

"Don't worry," Gina told me, reading my thoughts. There is no information on the internet about Tveirland, at least not yet.

“Maybe it's because nothing is known about what happens there.

"Do you have friends who have stayed in Tveirland?" Kinneas asked. Wow, so do we.

"Who were there today?" Adalbert asked.

"Celes and Locke," he replied.

Both, of course, were also characters from Final Fantasy , from the sixth installment . Everyone in that clan adopted the name of their favorite characters in the saga.

"The happy couple," Kinneas said wryly. What an eye they have for getting into trouble.

“They are new? Gina asked.

“Not Celes, but she was smitten with Locke as soon as she saw him, so she recruited him to the cause. There seemed to be a faint hint of resentment in Adalbert's words. They are there for him to go through the Path of the Assassin, you know that in the video game his character is a thief.

"So not all of your clansmen are as strong as you are?" I was forced to ask.

"Few are stronger than we," Adalbert replied, standing tall with pride.

I was relieved to know that, though just imagining someone stronger made me shudder. Especially after seeing what those four were capable of.

'You've been outlawing for a short time, man,' Kinneas said to me, touching his hat. You don't have a path yet, do you? You should think about choosing soon, who knows if in a few hours the hackers manage to dump the Allsium data into the real world.

What just a few days ago was a dream was now going to become my worst nightmare. The accumulated experience points would be of no use to me if that happened. He had to go through a Guild Source as soon as possible.

I hadn't even thought about it, I was calm because I thought that Greek and Dagon would protect me when they were users of the Path of the Paladin and the Assassin.

"Well, I have no idea which one to choose," I said, thinking aloud.

They all turned and looked at me raising their eyebrows.