Erebos Read Online Free PDF

somewhere. He focussed his attention on Nameless, who was skilfully dodging trees and pushing aside the branches in his path with his stick. He could clearly hear each step the game character took: the undergrowth snapped, dead leaves rustled. When the character climbed over a tor, small pebbles came loose and rolled down.
    On the far side of the tor the ground was wetter. Nameless wasn’t making such good progress any more, since his feet kept sinking in up to his ankles. Nick was impressed. It was all extremely realistic – when he was wading through the mud it even made a sucking noise.
    Nameless struggled on; he began to pant. The blue bar had shrunk to one third of its length. Nick allowed him a rest at the next rock. His character rested his hands on his thighs and bent his head down, obviously trying to get his breath back.
    There must be a stream somewhere around. Nick heard it gurgling and cut short his rest. He sent Nameless a short distance to the right, where he did in fact find a small stream. His character stopped short of it, still panting.
    â€˜Come on, drink.’ He pressed the down arrow on his keyboard and was delighted when Nameless actually bent down, cupped his hand and drank water from the stream.
    After that he made better headway. The ground was no longer damp, and the trees weren’t as dense either. But he still didn’t have any points of reference, and gradually Nick was beginning to worry that his go-straight-ahead strategy was a dead loss. If only he had an overview – maybe a map or . . . Overview! Nick grinned. Let’s see, maybe his virtual self could not only bend down, but climb as well! He chose a massive tree with low-hanging branches, positioned the figure in front of it and pressed the up arrow.
    Nameless carefully put his stick aside and pulled himself up on the branches. He stopped as soon as Nick released the arrow key, and started climbing when it was pressed again. Nick sent him up as high as possible – until the branches became too weak and he nearly slipped. Only when the figure had a secure foothold did Nick venture a look all round. The view was fantastic.
    The full moon was high in the sky, and shone its light on a seemingly endless greenish-silver sea of trees. To the left the foothills of a mountain range could be made out; the plains stretched out to the right. The landscape straight ahead was hilly; dots the size of pinpricks on a few of the hills revealed settlements.
    See, Nick thought triumphantly. Straight ahead is the right way.
    He already had his finger over the down arrow when a gleam of warm yellow light between the trees caught his eye. That looked promising. If he corrected his route to the left, he would find the source of the light within a few minutes. Maybe it was a house? Impatiently he sent his figure back down onto the ground, where it took up its stick again and walked on. Nick chewed on his bottom lip, hoping that he had fixed the direction correctly in his memory.
    It wasn’t long before he thought he could make out the first weak glimmers of light between the tree trunks. Almost at the same moment he struck an obstacle: a crevice that was much too wide for his character to jump over. Damn! The crevice stretched a long way in both directions, and disappeared somewhere in the darkness between the trees. To go round it would cost Nameless a lot of time – and possibly his bearings.
    Nick discovered the fallen tree only after he’d spent some time cursing. If he could get it into the right position . . . The space bar was the key to success. Nick’s game character dragged, pulled and pushed the trunk in every direction the cursor instructed. By the time the tree was lying across the crevice, Nameless was gasping for breath and the red life meter had gone down a lot.
    With the greatest care Nick made his screen hero balance on top of the tree trunk, which turned out to be a very precarious bridge, because on his