Готовый перевод Баффер / Buffer: Глава 2

Chapter 2
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Almost unsurprised, I turned to the computer and pressed party cancellation. Then I got up and walked over to the wall. On the beige, old Soviet wallpaper, thirty-five centimetres apart, there were three holes, as if they were nails. A match stuck into each one, in turn, sank halfway, almost two centimetres and three millimetres in diameter.

I made my way to the bedroom and pulled a BB gun out of a bag in the wardrobe. It looked like a real Glock 17, a toy I'd once really wanted. But when I bought it, after a week of shooting, I put it away and forgot about it. When I loaded a new can, I aimed it at the wall near the holes, then I remembered, went to the other wall, and fired from there. The ball expectedly did not leave even a five-millimeter-deep hole. So it was not a mark from the shooting, which I had forgotten about. My father's shotgun would have made such a noise that I would have remembered, and the neighbors would have come running.

And so - it really was a "Magic Arrow" spell.

I sat back in my chair, scratching my head with my gun. I jumped up, discharged the BB gun, and put it away in the cupboard. I sat down again. My head was completely blank. Fingers weren't trembling. What did it mean? What did it mean?

Repeating this to myself, I went to the kitchen, poured the tea, and went back to the computer. I put the cup next to another one, still full. I sat down again. What was the meaning of this?

It follows that I can indeed exert some kind of influence that has an outward expression fully consistent with the effect of a wizard's spell from a computer game. Let's check it out.

Opening the door to the balcony, I placed a half-liter jar on the handrail. I put it away - the house opposite was on the line. I leaned a mop against the handrail, put the can on it, and sat down on the floor.

I held out my finger and said in a low voice:

"Thy arrows are sharp."

Three dots flew off his finger, hitting the jar, knocking it off the wood and disappearing.

I got up from the floor and went to get a dustpan. I should have placed the newspaper on the floor.

Closing the door to the balcony, he sat back in his chair. So the magic was working. Damn.

I jumped up and threw myself against the wall. I dropped to my knees, scouring the floor. Not a speck of dust, and I had cleaned the day before yesterday. Where's the plaster, half a cubic centimeter's worth of dust and crumbs knocked out by the blow of a magic arrow? It's gone. Where did it go?

The blue towel served as the dark cloth. Carefully laying it on the floor, I sat down a meter away from the wall and stretched out my finger.

"Thy arrows are sharp."

Three dots off my finger, three holes in the wall at twenty centimeters from the floor. And a clean, dust-free towel.

Bullshit. Nonsense, isn't it? What kind of nonsense is it to implement the effect of a weak spell while vaporizing a few grams of very real matter into oblivion? Plus, the arrows have a double effect, piercing and thrusting. Otherwise, why would the jar fall down?

Somewhere "out there" something suddenly jerked, and I was inexplicably aware that the spell had been restored and was ready to be cast. Grabbing my watch, I began to watch the hand. Five minutes later, the "recognition" sensation was repeated. Well, this is more interesting. The magic in Tales is slot-based, based on remembering the spells cast. That is. Each spell has its recovery time and, once used, gets in the learning queue. My wizard's magic arrows take twenty seconds to recover. A game hour, or 'tick' in jargon, lasts two minutes. Two minutes equals an hour in the real world. Twenty seconds of real-time given to recover a spell in a game by this crazy logic is considered equal to one-sixth of a game hour, which lasts two minutes but equals an hour of real time. Bullshit. But logical in its way. So I have spell slots whose recovery time correlates to real time. And there's another point that needs checking.

I sat at the computer again, unwrapping the MUD client and scrolling through the history. I always automatically check to see what spells I've memorized! Where is it? Here, Magical Arrows - first circle, five of them learned.

Back against the wall, I spread out the towel again. How would I fix it? Mobile phone! Turning the camera on to record, I clamped the mobile with two books on the shelf so that both I and the wall were in the frame.

"Thy arrows are sharp. Thy arrows are sharp. Thy arrows are sharp. Thy arrows are sharp. Thy arrows are sharp."

On the fifth "sharp", I even got tongue-tied, barely able to complete the spell. What can you do, the wizards in the game are a "Christian" class, and all their magic is designed with quotes from the Bible.

As I traced the last dot off my finger, I looked around the wall - fifteen neat holes of two-millimeter diameter and no zero.

I stopped the recording and started checking the depth of all the holes with a match. Unequal, oddly enough. But the differences were no more than a millimeter. A weak first circle spell, air magic. Yep.

The recording showed that the dots coming off my finger isn't an illusion. It was true, they were faintly glowing, flying at an appreciable speed, and the holes appeared exactly where they had touched the wall. I found a piece of paper, placed it over the marks from the first spell, and pierced it with a match. Then check with the others, trying to put all the holes in the same area.

A clear semblance of a circle formed on the sheet. So the three arrow dots in the spell were flying in a cone from my finger. A short-range weapon?

Okay, it's been two minutes! Finger in the wall again, and again -...thy arrows are sharp.

Zero effect. OK, the logic is clear - you can only apply what has been memorized, just like in the game. OK, next experiment!

After waiting for the two spells to "recover" I started tormenting the wall again.

"Thy arrows are sharp." Three holes in the wallpaper. Now from a distance of ten centimeters, again.

"Thy arrows are sharp." There is hardly any spacing, an intricately shaped hole about five millimeters wide.

"Thy arrows are sharp." No effect.

The assumption that I have a memorisation list and recovery order can be considered proven. So was the spread of 'arrows' as they moved away from me. I went back to the computer, where the table of spells available to my wizard was still open.

Nine circles.

First Circle - "Protection", "Magic Arrow", "Strength", "Poison Identification", "Protection Against Darkness", "Create Light". Nothing useful, though 'Strength' is still worth checking out. Or here's another:

"Let there be light!" A small glass ball about a centimeter or two in diameter fell onto the table with a soft thud. For some reason, it didn't glow at all, though it should. Carefully examining the created object from a distance, I touched it with my finger. It didn't shine, damn it. What's wrong? Although the game is supposed to be "equipped", that is held in his hand. I had to take a deep breath and spend a minute convincing myself that it was worth taking a material object created out of thin air.

The ball in my hand immediately glowed with a soft pinkish light. About thirty watts of the light bulb, powered by no idea what. Great! The ball placed on the table immediately went out. For another minute, I persuaded myself that sometimes experimenting with strange things was worthwhile. Then the second ball lay next to the first. When I took them in my hand, only one glowed. So there are some unknown but working limiters. I stepped out onto the balcony and tipped my palm... as if a cigarette butt had fallen - a bunch of sparks instantly extinguished on the tiles, and no sound. Right, let's get on with it.

The second circle is " Identification of Inclinations", "Seeing the Invisible", "Identification of Magic", "Invisibility", and "Obfuscation". You don't need to see inclinations, although it can be useful. Walk into a dentist, for example, and immediately see what sadistic tendencies he has. Although I laugh in vain, I'll have to check all the "detects" tomorrow. Carefully. Without the fuss. They have no external display. "Obfuscation" - an analog of "Protection", reduces the chance of hitting a protected player. But how to calculate this chance in real life? Still, it's worth considering casting it every morning anyway. As for Invisibility... okay, later.

Circle three - "Icy Touch", "Stupor", "Flight", "Silence", and "Slowness".

Icy Touch is a weak water damage spell. No one uses it. Stupor is a wizard's main spell, which, if successful, paralyzes any enemy while also increasing all damage inflicted on that enemy by one and a half times. Outside of combat, it works for two ticks, while in combat it lasts for five rounds. If a tick equals an hour, a round is... well, two seconds in a game... one-sixtieth of an hour. One minute. When attacking a target, the stupor must last five minutes from the start of the attack.

Now that's real power. In a game, five rounds go by instantly, but in real life, you can cut a man to pieces in five minutes. A helpless one. Then again, what about the chance of passing a spell? It's not a hundred percent. How can you tell? And if you don't attack? Will the target stand still for two hours? However. Poor dog, it's a chilly October.

What else? Flight? In the game, a character under the flight effect only loses a unit of movement per step when walking. It also doesn't fall into water or trap pits. How would it look in real life? Again, we need to check.

Silence. There!

Jumping up, I ran into the kitchen. I grabbed a napkin. I crumpled it up and pushed it into my mouth. The spell I'd cast with the napkin in my mouth had no effect. So all they had to do was use the gag, and the magic was over. The game logic transferred to the real world worked, damn it! I wonder if "Silent" will work on other magic systems. I don't want to test it at all!

"Slowness? Gives a penalty to the opponent's initiative. Undeterminable and therefore useless.

Fourth Circle. "Stone Skin" - improves protection. "Repair" - restores a destroyed item. I should look at summer shoes. There's a cracked sole there. "Blink" - gives a chance to avoid an attack. "Restore" - completely removes fatigue... very interesting. I'll try it tomorrow. Even more than interesting, what if I can save a pill too? "Dispel Magic" - removes superimposed magical effects. Not all, and randomly selected, sometimes it's not helpful. All in all, again, not much is needed. Although "restore"... if I've got that right... okay, tomorrow.

Fifth Circle: "Acid" is a weak attack spell. But I still wouldn't write it off. The description in the game is: "You splash acid in your opponent's eyes". In real life, it can be creepy. I have to remember the formula. "Seal the room" - put a seal on it. If there's enough intelligence, monsters can't enter the room. Too bad I don't know how much intelligence I have now. And I don't know who's a monster and who's a player. "Defender" - summons a small critter that helps the wizard in battle. There's a more dangerous version, "Fire Defender", but I just haven't had time to learn it. I'm a little nervous about summoning things. Magic is magic, but I didn't sign up to be a demonologist! I'm scared. I won't... yet.

Circle six: 'Jump' - throws the wizard into any cell of one zone. You can't get into the other ones. I have to think... is a flat a zone? Or is a zone a staircase? A house? A street? A city? Or the whole planet? No, I'll take my time with that. Or I'll jump and find myself 300 kilometers down. "Find the object" is all it says. You say it, you'll find out where it might be. How much money would you get for Ivan the Terrible's library? The main thing is to name the object correctly and to be in the same zone as it. "Prolonged Stupor" is a longer version of a simple stupor. It should paralyze for eight minutes in combat but takes four times longer to recover after use. "Mantle of Shadows" is useful. It's catching and weakening alien spells. If I'm not the only one who can do that, it might come in handy. Too bad it's only visible when you use it on yourself.

In the seventh circle are group versions of Flight, Defence, Invisibility, and Strength. In one fell swoop, it's applied to all allies. I have no allies.

The eighth circle: air, fire, and ice auras - gives protection against spells of the respective school of magic. Pity they are visible to everyone around them. "Group Blessing" - normal 'Blessing' reduces all damage from physical attacks by half but doubles damage from any magic. "Group Prismatic Aura" - conversely, it gives protection from magic but doubles physical damage while removing the "Blessing" effect. So it's either/or. "Guardian Angel" - protects the wizard from all the vicissitudes of life. It saves and heals, and the higher the wizard's charm, the stronger the angel. But to summon one, like a guardian, is a fearful thing. Later, later, everything later.

And then there's the last, ninth circle, the best part. "Ice Shield" and "Dust Storm". They were really hard to learn. The creators of the game stuck the books with these spells in the most difficult areas! Shield reduces any damage by half, plus keeps critical hits from passing. Storm hits all enemies in the room, briefly blinding and stunning them. Still, did not make much damage, though, purely an auxiliary spell. 'Mass Stupor' - everyone around you who isn't in your group freezes. Very funny sometimes. Then there's the best of the best - "Defence of the Gods". Absolute immunity to any damage, any damage at all. Only it doesn't last long and takes a long time to recover.

That's all the wizard has. A typical buffer class that doesn't survive on its own. Why don't I have the power of a battle wizard sorcerer? Go out into the field, conjure the "Judgment of the Gods", and the whole field goes to hell in one fell swoop! Or Warlock - summon two or three bone spirits, suck the life out of the enemy, and add to yours! A sorcerer is also good - you can subdue any fighter, and he fights for you.

On the other hand, why would I want to fight? No, invisibility is good enough for me.

I finally started to think about what I'd been chasing all this time, which was that if online game servers all over the world were going down, and my example showed that magic had moved from games to real life, then there might be other... "lucky" people out there. And if I got the group support spells, someone else could get something much more deadly. "Mass Plague", "Armageddon", "Summoning of the Abyss", and the other joys of the gaming industry. If the number of new mages was insignificant, there would be no need to crash the game servers of firms whose revenues are in the billions, which move is, frankly, more akin to a panicked "geez, let's do something!"

So there are already a lot of mages. Enough to start making arrangements for their... neutralization, though not enough for rumors and panic. Do I want to be neutralized? Not a goddamn thing. So I'll keep a low profile and sit quietly in the corner and wait for things to work out. Well, as much as I can. So I'm not gonna search for any scary words like "magic in real life" or "spells for beginners" on the web. I'm just gonna fill in the holes in the wall and wait. Quietly, quietly. Especially since my fingers were starting to twitch from all this worrying, and I should take a pill.

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Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/85480/549165

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP