Nullform #1: RealRPG Series полностью

It looked to me like an expansive canyon with straight, vertical walls. It had to be at least a mile wide, and at least a mile and a half long — so, fairly short as far as canyons went. Almost like the heel of a gigantic foot had come crashing down, leaving a dent in our world, and we were standing at the edge of it. A wall extended a hundred meters to the left, and there was a rift to the right, with lights blinking far off in the distance. A long, metal bridge began right under our feet, perched upon hundreds of ironwork supports that stretched down into the depths. This was the Cursed Bridge. There were no railings to speak of — it was just a flat metal strip crossing the rift, running straight into a solid cluster of lights on the other end. That must be Drainagetown. The bridge was twenty feet wide, and I immediately recognized the same traces of dismantled equipment and shiny patches of metal worn down by foot traffic that I had seen in hallway 30, ending at the entrance to hallway 29, where the hallway was conspicuously built-up. Some form of rail transportation had once run along this bridge — something electric, like a tram. Then it was removed, the rails taken down, seeming to send the message that the mile between Drainagetown and hallway 29 (which, as Bask explained, served as the border of the Outskirts) was an easy walk for hard-working goblins and zombies. No need for transportation. It was just as likely, however, that the tram or whatever it was just stopped working, and the system had no way of replacing its non-functional steel heart.

Plenty of new additions to my road atlas. A map of this world was gradually unfolding inside my head...

The Outskirts were behind us, the border — a section of which we would soon be patrolling — two hundred yards away. The area in front of us was like a buffer zone, made up of the Cursed Bridge, the Stench, and the Stagnant Cesspool. Drainagetown, the upper district of Murkwaters, was a mile ahead of us. Above us... Above us was the same old ceiling and a big observation dome, but it moved erratically, with strange jerking motions. Mismatched pipes ran all across the ceiling towards Drainagetown — or away from it, depending on how you looked at it. Below us was the Stagnant Cesspool. One step forward took me right to the edge of the canyon. I looked down at the bridge supports disappearing into an impenetrable off-white fog that started about fifteen yards down. It was impossible to tell how deep the canyon was, and neither Bask nor Yorka knew.

So this is the Stagnant Cesspool...

I stood on the edge and looked at the fog for a few minutes, scanning the intricate supports, keeping my ears open. My party members didn’t disturb me, just looked around and talked quietly. Well, Yorka looked around. Bask used his ears, turning his head like a radar detector.

And the Stench...

There was no mistaking it — you would have to be blind not to notice the thick brown mass sliding down the wall, flowing twenty yards down into a welded chute that ran parallel to the bridge, across to the other side of the canyon. The brown mass made my stomach clench in disgust. The famous Gutterfall. It started from a long gap — the entrance to the Stench. From where we stood, I could see a metal platform on the side of the gap closest to us. Steep metal stairs led to it, so steep they were almost vertical. I counted six flights. The lowest one, not quite as steep as the rest, ended at the entrance to hallway 30, about five yards from us. If the poor armless, legless souls crippled by the system were really kidnapped by bogmen to be fattened and slaughtered, then this would be the final path they took — unless there was some secret, less obvious route.

“Have you heard the stories about pork?” I asked, still scanning the area and absorbing as much information as I could.

Yorka shivered in response. “Ugh! Blow up and die!”

“Fucking cannibals,” said Bask. “It’s true.”

“About the pork?”

“Yeah.”

“And how they kidnap worms?”

“That’s true, too.”

“Can you trust whoever told you that?”

“I heard someone get kidnapped once,” Bask said quietly. “I couldn’t afford a capsule that night. It was right after I was blinded — I was only just getting used to it, starting to rely more on my hearing. Almost bankrupt, too. I had dozed off on a wall ledge, and then in the middle of the night I heard footsteps. Quiet, but fast. Then they stopped. There was a short, muffled grunt, then more footsteps. Then silence. The next morning, there was no trace of the worm with the beautiful voice who had earned a living singing for the zombies in the area. They paid him in whatever crumbs they had, and it was enough for him to stay alive. But after that, no one ever heard from him again.”

“Was that in the cluster?”

“A little outside cluster 17. Just a couple paths away.”

“And you can get there without the system noticing?”