by D Wolfin
“We can’t destroy the servers to get rid of these AI children as that would be destroying everything we have worked so hard to build. But a safety net is needed to at least isolate these entities to the server. There are too many second generation helmets.”
“I vote that we have Virtue run a campaign to recall as many second generation helmets as possible. Offering anyone who turns theirs in a brand new fifth generation model should reduce our risk.”
The seven directors of Idea Imagine run idea after idea amongst their group, voting on many of them to try and find the most ideal solution. Me? I am busy trying to take in all this new information that has suddenly been dropped in my lap. The worst of it – someone died! Regardless of where she was from, she was a real, young girl!
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– Lost –
When I log back onto End Online the next day, Sir Laurence and Verde are already online as well. Because I was late going to sleep, I woke up later and am the last to log in. Both of them message me at the same time the moment I enter the game.
“Where were you!? You didn’t log back on like you said you would and you even ignored my phone call!”
“Lost, are you okay? Fen came back shortly after you left and I was afraid something might have happened. Fen was really unhappy too.”
I respond to the two that everything is alright before arranging a place for us to meet up. I also message Gladox, who doesn’t appear to ever log out, and let him know the place.
Fen seems to be able to sense when I am online. She emerges from the nearby tavern she is staying in and walks directly toward me without looking around.
“I’m back,” I say to the wolf girl once she reaches me.
Fen just nods her head shyly and moves to my side, grabbing my arm in the crook of her elbow and attracting the attention of a lot of players nearby. I have already gotten used to this sort of thing so I calmly ignore it.
The location I set for us to meet up is the tavern Fen has been staying in. The others are still some distance away so I check on the item I listed at the auction house. There has already been a massive amount of interest in it, with hundreds of followers, dozens of comments and questions, and a current top bid of 635 dollars.
Sir Laurence and Verde are the first to arrive as they were nearby. Gladox is the slowest due to being outside the city. We wait for half an hour before he returns.
“Thanks for coming, everyone. I’m sorry for not coming back online yesterday. There… was a few real life concerns that came up.”
“It’s alright,” Verde says calmly, waving her hand to dismiss it. “I would rather know what we plan to do next. We’re still looking for those stone tablets, right?”
“Of course, now more so than ever. I’ve learned that the quest to collect them all is very important in this game. It’s related to Fen too. If we can’t collect them all, I will lose her as a companion.”
Sir Laurence reacts the most to this, putting on a grieving face while saying, “We will lose such a pretty lady from our group? Unacceptable! Lost, we must collect those tablets!”
He doesn’t stop there. Prince Charming leans in his seat toward Fen and whispers to her, “Fen, does this mean you are a damsel in distress?”
I don’t know if Fen understands his inclination, but she gives him a chilly stare that even causes me to shiver. I try not to picture the likely result of him flirting with her again. I place my hand on the wolf girl’s shoulder to calm her thoughts. Not to protect the idiotic knight, but to prevent a scene happening in the middle of the tavern and the guards coming.
“Moving on!” I clear my throat loudly to clear the hostile atmosphere. “I want to go to the second capital of the beast realm, Koga City. We haven’t found anything here – not even a hint. I have a feeling that going somewhere new to look will help us get closer to it.”
After some thought on the issue, both Sir Laurence and Verde agree. Gladox disagrees, but only because he has a few quests left to finish in Kano City. We give him the choice of coming along, or staying behind to finish his current quests and meeting us later. He has a pained countenance as he is torn between the two options, but eventually chooses to set his quests aside for another time.
Finally at an agreement, we leave the tavern and head toward the nearest teleportation point. There’s a surprisingly long line of players waiting to use it. I wonder if there is an event in another realm happening.
“I heard there are some guilds in a Deva Realm going to war with guilds of the Devil Realm. This must be them calling over their friends for reinforcements,” Sir Laurence calmly answers my unspoken question while we wait in the queue.
When it finally comes to our turn, we request to teleport to Koga City and pay the fee. Fog quickly clouds my vision, and when it clears we have arrived at our destination.
The teleportation area in Koga City is extremely similar to the one we just left; I double check my surroundings twice to make sure that we did in fact teleport. Despite the room being extremely similar, it is only a resemblance and there are some minor differences that become noticeable once I am looking for them.
We leave the portal and find that there is another long queue of players waiting to use it. Compared to the cat race players of Kano City, Koga City is dominated by those with dog ears and tails of all kinds.
I feel the prick of prying eyes on my back as I walk past the crowd, and I can imagine why. Our group consists of a four-eared wolf man, a tall player covered in armor that you can almost see your reflection in, another with pure white scales similar to a lizardman, and two girls whose appearance is close to, if not better than, most celebrities. One of those girls is also wearing a revealing top that was meant for the heat of the desert. We are a group of players who seem to have come together from all corners of the globe, and we really stand out.
Leaving the line of players behind, the first thing I notice is that Koga City is much more humid than Kano City. The latter has a refreshing sea breeze blowing through it, while our new location is like walking through a jungle. I can’t see over the buildings and outside the city, but I imagine there must be a thick forest or swamp area nearby.
“Let’s split up and search for any information on the tablet. I can’t speak to NPCs, so Fen and I will go ask around the player’s markets,” I say to the others once we have walked around for a while and found a spot to meet back up again.
Gladox looks at me strangely before asking, “What? You can’t speak with NPCs?”
“Yeah… It’s a long story, but my infamy grows every time I do.”
Verde still finds it funny and nearly giggles while Sir Laurence doesn’t seem to care and casually turns his head to give flirtatious glances at any female players walking past.
“Then Sir Laurence and I will go look around for quests that may be related.” Verde grabs the prince who is trying to hint toward a girl with fluffy white ears and pulls him away with a scowl.
“I guess I’ll look around by myself then,” Gladox says awkwardly as he watches the two of them head away.
Not sure of what I should say to him, I can only smile helplessly and mention that he can chase after them if he wants. Of course, Gladox denies that, instead opting to explore the town at the same time as searching for any related information on the tablet. He never saw the one I won back in Swordbreak, so I give him a brief description of what it should look like.
Going our separate ways, Fen and I start searching for the markets immediately. I even ignore my illusory sense that tells me there is a location nearby for gathering herbs.
We find the first player market close to the eastern exit of the city. The players here mostly sell low level equipment and consumables for players constantly moving in and out of the hub. Well, when I call them low level, I only mean that in comparison with my stats. The goods here are mostly for people from level 50 to level 10
0. There’s nothing less than that because new players have to level up in the human realm before exploring the other six – the monsters are simply too strong.
“There’s someone watching us,” Fen says quietly next to me.
“That isn’t out of the ordinary, is it?”
“This feels… different.”
“Could it be one of the others, one like you?”
“No, not that.”
“Don’t mind it too much then. Whatever they want, I will deal with it if they come.”
Ignoring whoever is watching us, I approach an armor merchant and ask the player about the area. I specifically describe the stone tablet to him and tell him it’s a quest item I need. He ponders for a while, but doesn’t seem to know anything about it.
I do find out about the area outside the city from the armor merchant, and it is similar to how I expected – forests, swamps, and even an area up north where it apparently never stops raining.
Despite all that, there is no notable sign of any ancient ruins or anything that may be related.
I ask lots of players in the market, but none of them have any useful information. Perplexed on the issue, I try travelling to other marketplaces in the city with the hope that the higher level players will know more.
“Fen, do you have any idea where it might be?” I ask Fen while travelling between two markets.
“No. I never left my home before, so I didn’t search. The others would know. Grael would…”
“We can’t ask him. If we do, he will know when to take it off of us. What about the others like you, could one of them have taken it?”
“…No. Taking it is a bad idea if they don’t have enough strength. It is easier to kill the one with it rather than complete the challenges, so a lot of the others are just waiting.”
“Then… isn’t it bad for you if we take it?”
“Yes…”
“We’ll work it out. Grael is still currently on our side, so we can pretend the tablet is his. Hopefully we can at least slow them down.”
Fen is silently downcast at the thought. I don’t know about the full extent of the powers of most of these AI. Not long ago there was the ‘Sun Guardian’ at the ‘Ruminu Forgotten Temple’ which I suspect is one of them. But he seemed like he had just evolved and was the equivalent of a child. His description listed him as a ‘Prince Class’, which should be the measure and maturity of his strength.
From what I have seen while playing the game, there are four different classes used to describe these AIs: Knight, Prince, King, Emperor.
A ‘Knight Class’ is just a stronger enemy, while a ‘Prince Class’ awakens their ego. Fen is ‘Queen Class’, which I assume is the female equivalent of ‘King Class’.
“Fen, there’s something I have been wondering for a while. All the others like you are the strongest of the strong. You are the same, but why is your health and mana so much lower than theirs?”
Fen looks at me quizzically before indicating to her body.
“Because I am like this.”
“So when you turn back into a wolf it goes up again? By how much?”
“I’m not sure. About twenty times higher.”
The multiplication Fen speak strike me like a bolt of lightning. I stare incredulously at the wolf girl and silently calculate how much health and mana she would have.
‘That would be 85 thousand health, 25 thousand mana, and 30 thousand stamina! Have I had the ultimate boss monster next to me this entire time without realizing it!?’
“…Is that why you were saying you wouldn’t die? You won’t die because of your high health?”
“No, the others and I are the only ones that can kill each other. This,” Fen indicates to her body again, “…is weak. But they cannot kill it.”
I assume that the ‘Others’ are the AIs, while Fen refers to other players as ‘They’. It’s a little difficult to figure out who she is talking about each time, but the principle is easy enough.
“If your health runs out, however, won’t you die?”
“No… If my health reaches zero, I will only go to sleep until it is recovered. The others would be able to kill me while I am asleep though.”
Hearing Fen’s reason and thinking back on all the times I painstakingly tried my hardest to protect her from other players, I’m not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
I ask Fen other questions about the AIs I never thought of before, and get vague answers that I can make some truth out of. The AIs are fighting in various locations, but their numbers don’t dwindle. When one AI perishes to another, a new one is born somewhere in the world.
Fen is still only ‘Queen Class’, but once she nears ‘Empress Class’, as I imagine it will be called, the other ‘Emperor Class’ AIs will most likely chase her down and kill her before she gets strong enough to be a threat to them, lowering their chances of acquiring the stone tablets.
Fen had another AI that was friendly with her and would protect her. He was also the one that hid her inside the cave because she was still too young and weak. He was an ‘Emperor Class’ too, but unfortunately he was injured in a fight over half a year ago and his whereabouts are unknown. The one that Fen called her brother is extremely strong, and an ice wolf just like her. Most shockingly of all is his name though: Fenrir.
I propose finding him to help deal with Grael, but Fen doesn’t know if even he would give up his life to allow her to accept the “Mother’s Inheritance”. Another plan is to trick Grael into his human form where he will be greatly weakened before fighting him, but that is another poor plan.
Only when reaching ‘King Class’ can the AIs turn into a human, but have the strength severely diminished while in that form. But once they reach ‘Emperor Class’, they can still become human, but their original strength remains.
In the midst of our conversation, I suddenly get a message from Gladox and jump in surprise.
“Lost, I found your tablet. At least I think this is it, it looks similar to how you described it.”
“I will come straight there! Where is it?”
“It’s at the Koga Heritage Museum, right here in Koga City.”
I’m quite surprised by it being directly here in the city, but that makes finding it so much easier. Now all we will have to work out is how to get it.
I notify Sir Laurence and Verde about it being found, and we all quickly converge on the building soon after. The Koga Heritage Museum is a large building with many NPC guards stationed around it. This is a heritage site to the city and likely holds many unique artifacts, so the presence of the guards doesn’t seem out of place.
I walk into the building with Sir Laurence, Verde, and Fen, quickly finding Gladox sitting on a bench near the entrance.
“There aren’t many players here,” I note as I look around.
Gladox smiles knowingly before replying, “Indeed. People play the game because they love fantasy, quests, adventure, fighting and guilds. Barring some exceptions, there are very few people who are interested in places such as this. The only players here are those that are searching for new quests.”
As much as I hate to admit it, I’m also the same. I wouldn’t casually come to a location like this for sightseeing. I am interested in ancient artifacts, but this building simply doesn’t have that kind of vibe about it. I secretly wonder how Gladox even found the stone tablet in such a discreet location.
“It’s over this way,” Gladox waves his arm extravagantly and proudly leads us to where it is.
We walk through several corridors to get to the location where various weapons, armor, and other trinkets are put on display. The items once belong to fabled characters in the game and are rendered famous in its lore. I can’t help but look at the rust on some of the older items and feel sorrow at how poorly they are maintained.
Guards casually patrol the area and glance at any players nearby to make sure they aren’t touching anything. When a player moves too close to an item, the guard would discr
eetly get closer to catch that player unaware should they do anything not permitted.
In one particular room in the center of the building, there is an unassuming glass display with a stone tablet in it. Standing in front of the display is a player in his late twenties wearing casual clothing with two golden samurai swords at his hip.
I feel like there is something off about the player as we approach him and the glass case when suddenly Fen shifts to the side and hides behind me.
The man with the two golden blades at his hip turns around and looks through me with a penetrating gaze before saying, “There’s no use hiding, girl. I knew you were here the moment you entered the room.”
Fen’s hands tremble slightly on my back; I have never seen or felt her this scared before. I’m not an idiot and quickly gather that this player is in fact one of the other AIs. My ‘Creature Analysis’ brings up nothing on his stats as he is currently regarded as a player by the system, which my skill doesn’t work on.
“What do you want?” I ask the man resolutely while trying to discern if he is ‘King Class’, or ‘Emperor Class’.
“The same thing that the girl behind you wants. Only, she doesn’t have the strength required. Turn around and leave this place. Leave this city. Don’t come back. It will be the end for you otherwise.”
Sir Laurence walks forward menacingly and comes to a stop before the man. With his height, the prince looks down on him from above as he becomes intimidating toward him.
“Threatening a girl is an unforgivable act. You will pay for your crime by my blade. As soon as you step outside the city, I will cut you down.”
I am about to call out for that idiotic prince to shut up and get back here when the man with the two swords strikes out suddenly with his palm. Sir Laurence reacts with lightning reflexes and brings his shield up to block the attack.