Please note: English is not my native language.
"^$^#&%@ This is a translation. @^%#&@%@^%
By the author of "Cyberpunk 2077: Demons of Night City."
Honestly, I wanted to take on cyberpunk and revive the translation, but I didn't want to translate 85 chapters just to catch up with another translator's translation on WebNovel, lol.
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201/112
That was the arterial pressure my tonometer showed. I was lying on a newly bought couch, drenched in a cold sweat and feeling a frantic throbbing in my temples. The crushing headache made thinking difficult. The hope that all this would pass on its own had finally vanished.
I'm not one to bother doctors without a serious reason, but it seemed this was it. It was time to call an ambulance, and as soon as possible. My cell phone was on the nightstand next to the bed, but reaching it proved difficult. Opening my eyes, I found that I could barely see anything. Everything was blurry, and my hands were numb and wouldn't obey.
This was possibly the most critical, or even the last, moment of my life, but I felt no fear. Quite the opposite. The crushing headache suddenly receded, and a wave of strange calm washed over me.
Simultaneously, a certainty came—my journey here had come to an end. This feeling seemed like an external suggestion, but I didn't resist it. An end is an end. However, instead of my life flashing before my eyes, a single thought flared in my fading consciousness: I shouldn't have bought the new couch. I could have lasted another month on the old one.
This foolish resentment toward fate seemed unworthy of my final moments, but the time was already lost. Alright. Now I would find the exact answer to all the sacred questions about the post-mortem fate of people. It's time.
I thought I saw myself from the side. A middle-aged man with short stubble in an old black T-shirt. This was probably a hallucination. A quirk of an agonizing brain. I think I had read about similar near-death experiences once. People dying in hospitals saw themselves on their hospital beds surrounded by doctors.
However, then something completely insane began.
My gaze moved away further, and the image of the body on the couch shrank. It turned into a small picture floating on waves of whitish mist, and next to it was another image. A much brighter image. My gaze plunged into it.
A dazzling sun shone in the blue sky. Beneath it, majestic Aztec-like pyramids were drowning in tropical greenery. Could it be that the indigenous American beliefs were the correct ones, and I was about to be judged by some Quetzalcoatl?
No.
These weren't Aztec pyramids. Statues of Lizardmen adorned the temples and pedestals. Living representatives of the reptilian race ascended the steps, carrying a portly, toad-like creature in a palanquin. Something familiar flickered in this entire image, but my memory wasn't working properly. I couldn't think right now. I just watched the exotic spectacle.
The Lizardmen humanoids carried their passenger to the top of the pyramid, where a short priest in a bone mask stood by a richly decorated altar, topped with a bluish sphere the size of a tennis ball. The portly creature slowly descended from the palanquin, and everyone bowed to it with reverence. Hymns sounded in a language unknown to me.
The priest in the mask raised a ritual dagger, gleaming with gold, toward the sun.
Is this a sacrifice? Yes.
The portly creature didn't hesitate for a second; it bowed over the altar, reciting a prayer. The priest in the mask tip-toed up behind him and slit the ritual victim's throat. Thick blood flowed in a stream onto the altar. The bluish sphere flickered. The knowledge that the artifact was absorbing the soul of this creature somehow entered my head. It had voluntarily made this sacrifice to become the eternal guardian of the ancient bastions, defending them from the corrupting influence of Chaos.
And again, memory stirred but couldn't break free from the shackles of post-mortem calm. I continued to observe.
With great reverence, the Lizard priests placed the sphere in a recess in the wall of a temple complex. Hundreds of years flew by like a flash for the soul of the Slann, confined within the sphere. The creature didn't yearn in despair, didn't mourn its lost life, and didn't lose its mind. It contemplated its own thoughts, remaining in stoic tranquility.
It seemed that it would always be this way, but the relentless march of time changed the world around it. The city and temple fell into ruin. Monstrous wars shook entire continents. Eventually, the once-great city was swallowed by the jungle. The streets were deserted. Only wild beasts and dark forces occasionally darted among the pyramids. And then, the gaze of one of those uninvited guests was drawn to the sphere containing the soul of the Slann. The hand of a warm-blooded being touched the sacred artifact. With an old knife, thinned from constant sharpening, he extracted the sphere from the temple wall, slipping it into a waxed bag with other stolen treasures.
The thief turned out to be a man.
For the next few years, the soul in the sphere very rarely saw the light. The artifact was moved from the bag into a box, which traveled in the cramped hold of a ship. The sphere ended up thousands of kilometers from its temple. However, the Slann inside calmly endured even this ordeal.
Many ugly human faces peered into the sphere, not understanding its true value. The artifact was sold and bought.
The penultimate memory of the sphere was the preparation of a trade caravan. People, their horses, a few Ogre mercenaries. The procession was preparing to leave a small town, and an elderly man was turning the sphere in his hands, sometimes looking through it at the sun. Afterward, he placed it in a case. Darkness fell again.
The sphere's last memory began with a non-human hand removing it from the case. Green, gnarled fingers with dirty claws gripped the artifact. A murky red eye of an ugly little runt in a pointy cap stared at the sphere. A Goblin. At his feet lay the freshly killed corpse of a blonde young man. A pool of blood was spreading from a wound in his head onto the wooden floor.
— Blistin'! Blistin'! — the Goblin cackled, scratching the sphere with his nail. — Found a shiny!
Previously, the soul in the sphere had barely heard sounds, but somehow, it grasped the meaning of these words.
Behind the Goblin, a Greenskin comrade, very similar but slightly larger, appeared. He snarled viciously, raising a rusty cleaver. The Goblin with the sphere turned and shrieked:
— No! No! I share!
— You a thievin' skwark! — the larger Goblin roared, lunging at his comrade.
He rained kicks and blows with the flat of the cleaver upon him. The sphere fell to the floor, right into the pool of blood. Dirty, coarse-leather Goblin boots constantly trampled the sacred artifact. Cracks appeared on the sphere. The image froze.
My gaze moved away again. Now there were two pictures before me: me, dying on the couch, and the cracked sphere in a pool of blood. A third image appeared nearby. The short and joyless life of the blonde young man flashed quickly through it. He was born into a family, probably of a tavern servant. He spent his entire life in a small fortified village that accommodated caravans. The lands around were teeming with danger. Bandits, Beastmen, Animated Dead, but the main scourge was the Greenskins.
It was they who eventually burst into the village one dark night. The young man didn't even try to fight. He was too frightened and hoped that the guards of the recently arrived caravan would handle the raid. After all, there were even Ogres among the guards. The young man tried to hide, but the ugly creatures seemed to have penetrated everywhere. Eventually, he received a blow from behind to the knee. He fell, trying to cover his face with his hands. He prayed to his gods for mercy, but none was to be expected from Goblins.
The enemy savagely beat him for several minutes. Kicked, bit, grabbed his hair, and finished him off with a blow to the back of the head. The young man's soul flew away, but the body still retained the smoldering embers of life.
Something revealed all this information to me. Or rather, someone…
— Your path is not yet over, — said a voice full of majestic authority. — Each of you three carries the seed of a new destiny. Soul, knowledge, body. Become one!
A pale thread pierced the head of my dying body on the couch, passed through the damaged sphere in the second image, and dove into the corpse of the young servant in the third.
— Let what has been inscribed by my hand be fulfilled. Obey the will of…
The voice's last words dissolved in a growing roar. The images disappeared. I felt like I was now flying through a tunnel of shimmering energy, and then…
Flash!
The sensation of a body returned to me, only I wasn't lying on a new couch, but in a pool of my own blood. The old wooden floor beneath me felt incredibly hard and was slightly trembling. No wonder. A couple of Goblins were grappling nearby.
Goblins…
Just recently, these creatures were characters in books, games, and art of varying degrees of relevance. Now, two of these creatures were jostling a couple of steps away from me. Through the smell of blood, I sensed a musty stench, something between the "fragrance" of a derelict homeless person and the foul odor one might smell in a pigsty. Wet spots of dirt were visible on the edges of the Goblins' black robes.
— Skwark! Nasty skwark, zog! Yer gonna eat yer own guts! — one of the Goblins roared, beating the smaller comrade.
The latter only squealed, trying to shield himself from the kicks and slaps. I understood their language. I probably shouldn't have, but I did. And I also understood that my new life hung by a thread. It seemed the wounds inflicted by the Goblin had miraculously healed, but the place was full of these creatures. Through the din of the fighting Greenskins, I heard shouts, groans, laughter, and the crackle of a fire.
I had been dropped into a village captured by Goblins.
Why, how, and what the hell? There's no time to look for answers to these questions. The danger is too close. I need to get out of here, and then sort things out.
I sincerely hoped the Goblins would take their complicated relationship squabble somewhere far away. Leave me alone. Then I might be able to look for a weapon or a place to properly hide. However, the Gobbla had other plans. The bigger one shoved his comrade away and began rooting through the surrounding items.
This place was a storeroom. A cramped, elongated room, cluttered with crates, barrels, and sacks. It was relatively bright here. A glass lantern hung on one of the walls, with a flickering flame inside. Perhaps the merchant had returned to count his goods shortly before the raid. Thanks to this illumination, I had a "splendid" view of a Goblin's butt.
The Greenskin was currently facing away from me, so I had a chance to look around. Nothing resembling a weapon. Just bales of cloth, small chests, fragile vases. A cleaver and a dagger hung on the Goblin's belt, but getting to them was another matter.
Should I continue playing dead? That might work, but… Goblins eat people. Although, they might satisfy themselves with others first. I wasn't lying in the most conspicuous spot. These seemed to be Night Goblins. They would sleep or hide from the sun during the day. If I could last until dawn…
The Goblin suddenly turned around.