Veil Online - Book 2: An Epic LitRPG Adventure

by John Cressman

  The girls looked at each other and then at Jace, then back to each other.

  “Uh… the dragon slayers?” offered Mika.

  “I’m sorry,” the man cut in. “That name is taken.”

  “It has to be unique?” Charlena sighed.

  “How about the Formidable Four!” Diana said.

  “I’m sorry,” the man repeated. “That name if taken.”

  “The Fantastic Four?” Charlena said.

  “The Furious Four!”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said again, like a broken record. “Those names are taken.”

  They spent fifteen minutes thinking of names, only to have them be taken. Considering how many people played the game, and how many groups must have been formed, Jace wasn’t all that surprised. He vaguely remembered having a similar problem when he’d formed a group years ago.

  “Friends of Luna,” Charlena offered.

  “That name is available,” the man said.

  Jace cringed. “Can’t we think of something else?”

  They turned and looked at Luna, who was sitting behind them. The little cat had its tail wrapped around herself and her little chin was raised. “Yes.”

  Rolling his eyes, Jace waited for any objections and when he received none he nodded to the man. “Friends of Luna.”

  “Very good,” the man said in his bored, monotone voice.

  “That will be 50 gold a piece to join the guild,” the man told them. “And another 50 gold to register your name with the guild and 50 gold to register it with the guard.”

  The girls all looked at him and he sighed and pulled out his gold. “How much do you guys have?”

  He knew it was more gold than he had, especially after paying for the room. He definitely needed to do more thieves guild jobs tonight and hope there was a chance to earn some extra money.

  Mika handed over all 50 of her gold without complaint, even though Jace knew she’d been planning to buy a katana. Charlena gave him another 50 gold and he took the rest out of his own gold.

  He pushed the gold over the man and waited while he finished scribbling something on the parchment. It took the man a minute to finish his writing and then he took out some wax and a seal and affixed the guild’s seal to the parchment. Rolling it up, he handed it to Jace.

  “This is your copy of your band’s charter,” he told them. “Keep it with you while on guild business. This is especially true when operating within the city. If you lose it, it is 25 gold to replace it. If you need to add or remove a member, it is 25 gold plus their annual dues, which is 50 gold.

  As Mordred, such small sums wouldn’t have concerned him, but right now it was nearly every penny they had. Hopefully, it would pay off quickly.

  “As guild members,” the man continued. “You may check the board any time, day or night, to see if there are any jobs. Once you take a job from the board, you have 24 hours to complete it before another band can take it. If another band does take it, the first one to return with the job complete gets the reward.”

  Jace nodded. This was all stuff he knew. It wasn’t a big deal with the smaller quests. With raids, it meant the first group who got the raid had 24-hour exclusive rights to it. In VEIL, that was huge. Guilds usually had a member standing by the board 24 hours a day to wait for new raids to come in. Then it was just a fight to see who would grab it first.

  “Thank you,” Jace said and motioned his companions outside. In the courtyard, they had passed a large board that Jace had noticed earlier. The thing had to be ten feet long and six feet high and it was covered in parchments.

  The board also had about 30 players standing around it. They varied in level but Jace could see many of them were level 95 and above. Those were probably the raiders.

  Jace gestured to the board. “Start looking for a quest we can do. If you stare at them, some of them will be outlined in green, others in yellow and rest in red. Or, and the white ones. The red ones are higher than the highest level member. Yellow ones will be higher than the average level of the group but still in the same or lower than the highest level member. And greens are ones where the level is equal to or lower than the average level in the group. White ones are too low for us and we won’t get any experience.”

  The three girls looked at him blankly and Jace sighed. “Look for yellow or green ones. Call it out if you find one.”

  The three girls nodded and the four of them immediately began rifling through the various pieces of parchment. Most of them were red. Jace wasn’t surprised. Most people would solo through the first 10 levels within a week or two and then start joining groups. Because of this, most group quests started at level 10 and went up. The raids were all level 90+.

  “Found one!” said Mika, holding up a piece of yellow tingled paper. “A yellow one!”

  She handed the parchment to Jace who looked at it.

  Dear guild members,

  The city sewer guild has recently reported that some of their members have gone missing while inspecting the sewers.

  They have hired the Adventurers Guild to find and eliminate the cause of the disappearances.

  Signed,

  Guildmaster Leofsige Blackwoode

  As the group leader, only Jace could accept the quest. Tentatively he viewed the text of the quest.

  The Adventurers Guild has offered your group the quest, “Alligators in the Sewer”

  Reward: +25 faction with Whitecliff Adventurers Guild, +25 faction with Whitecliff Guard.

  Level: 5

  Accept quest? (Yes or No)

  Jace read over the quest twice. It looked like exactly what they needed. He accepted and then received a new message.

  Quest “Alligators in the Sewer” Updated.

  Exclusive Time Limit: 24:00 hours

  “We have a quest,” Jace told them. “And we have 24 hours to complete it before someone else can grab it.”

  “Are we really going into a sewer?” Diana asked, her face a mask of disgust.

  The game designers had made the choice to exclude normal body elimination functions except for vomiting, which certain poisons, diseases and spells caused you to do. But there was not the normal bodily waste elimination. Despite this, they’d included sewers in all the major cities as a way for the criminal element to get around.

  In fact, Jace had used them many times to get from one part of the city to the other during jobs for the Assassins Guild when he was playing Mordred. He smiled. “That’s one nice thing about the sewers. There’s just water down there.”

  “And alligators,” Mika offered.

  Chapter 11

  Several hours later, Jace and his companions trudged through the sewers. While what he said earlier was true, about it only containing water, Jace had forgotten that the developers did include the sewer smell. He assumed they either wanted it to at least smell authentic or they were just sadists.

  Charlena had been able to mostly ignore it by turning down her sensory input. Jace guessed he’d done the same as Mordred, which is why he hadn’t remembered it. Unfortunately, for Jace, Mika and Diana, that wasn’t an option. They were stuck at full sensory input and got to enjoy the full effect of the sewer smell.

  “Can we just give up already?” Diana asked, her nose and mouth now covered with some cloth she’d purchased. “We've been down here for hours and we haven’t seen a single alligator.”

  Jace shared her frustration. When they first opened the sewers, they immediately ran into the smell and Diana forced them to go to the market and, after borrowing some gold from Charlena, bought a cloth to cover her nose and mouth.

  As it happened, Jace had to get some cloth as well to make a sling to carry Luna. They discovered the water was knee level and if he didn’t carry her, she would have been swimming the entire time. His familiar had made her feeling VERY clear on how she felt about swimming, so he’d suggested the sling.

  Next, when they’d all climbed down into the sewers, Diana and Mika realized it was too dark to see for
normal human eyes. Charlena was fine with her elven sight and Jace could use Cat-Vision, but the other two girls were, literally, in the dark.

  That’s when he learned Diana had also chosen a cat familiar too but hadn’t summoned it because it was too painful. They had tried in vain to convince her to summon it, but Mika had presented a different solution. One of the spells she had was called Moonlight and created a globe of pale light the two girls could see by. So, they’d used her spell to light the way through the sewer.

  Once they started exploring, they quickly learned that the sewers were a vast labyrinth that stretched beneath the entire city. They quickly ran across some large rats, which they dispatched with ease but no alligators. Now, hours had passed and still no sign of the creatures they were here to kill.

  “What do you say?” Diana asked again.

  Jace considered her request. He had to admit, he was tempted to give up. But if they did, they would have wasted all that time and even if they came back tomorrow, another group could have grabbed the quest and completed it. He really wanted to finish this quest, if for no other reason than he didn’t want to feel like he had wasted everyone’s time.

  He looked beyond the glove of light and thought he caught movement again. He’d seen it several times now and had started to wonder if perhaps the alligators were repulsed by the light. Maybe they were scaring the creatures off with the very thing they were using to find them.

  “Let’s try something,” he offered. “And if it doesn’t work, we call it quits for the day and maybe try again tomorrow morning.”

  “I can’t,” Charlena said apologetically. “I start my summer job tomorrow. I’ve been meaning to tell you but just didn’t get a chance.”

  Jace turned to the elf. “Summer job?”

  Charlena looked embarrassed. “Yes, I have student loans, but I use the money from my summer job to pay for my incidentals. I start tomorrow, 10am-6pm. So, I’ll be logging in later starting tomorrow.”

  Jace tried to keep his face impassive but inside he was disappointed. He knew she’d just taken her finals and had assumed she would be on summer break and could log in most of the day and they could do things as a group. Now it looked like that wouldn’t be the case.

  “Where are you working?” Diana asked her.

  Charlena smiled. “I’m working at Johnny’s Bistro as a waitress. It’s a nice place near campus that my friends and I hang out at sometimes.”

  Diana nodded. “I remember working as a waitress when I was younger.” The older woman seemed to lapse into nostalgia and didn’t offer any details. Quietly, Jace heard her mutter. “So long ago.”

  “No problem,” Jace said, forcing a smile. Jace knew it was a problem. It would be more difficult for them to level together without Charlena. And he wasn’t sure how well he could depend on Diana to level up herself.

  “What was your idea?” Charlena said, obviously trying to change the subject. She was a smart girl and she most likely knew it was problematic. That was probably why she’d been waiting to tell him.

  Jace gestured to the sphere of light. “I wonder if we’re scaring them off with the light.”

  The others looked around but Charlena nodded. “Are you seeing things moving too?”

  Nodding, Jace looked down to Luna. “You still can’t smell anything, right?”

  “No,” came a muffled meow from inside the sling and not for the first time, Jace felt sorry for the little cat with its superior olfactory senses. Jace was barely suppressing a gag reflex as it was. He couldn’t imagine his nose being as sensitive as his familiar’s.

  “Can you hear things moving?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” came the muffled reply after a few seconds of twitching ears.

  He peered into the dark but the light he was in was throwing his vision off. He guessed it was similar with Charlena. If they wanted to be able to see fully, they needed to get outside of the globe.

  “Diana and Mika,” he addressed the two light dependent members. “I want you to stay here and be ready. Charlena and I will go off in opposite directions. If we encounter any alligators, we’ll attack them and then pull them back here.”

  “Won’t the light just scare them off again?” Diana asked.

  “Once we attack, they’ll follow us,” Jace told them. “It’s just the way they’re programmed. They may be avoiding the light but during combat, they’ll ignore it.”

  He hoped. Jace hadn’t run into this exact scenario before but he did have plenty of experience pulling enemies. It should work the way he described unless the creatures had a strong aversion to light, like true vampires. And he hoped they weren’t dealing with vampyric alligators.

  Walking over to Charlena, he took off the sling he was using to carry Luna and handed it to her. She looked at it without understanding.

  “Take Luna,” he told her. “If you pull an alligator, she can send me a message, so I know not to pull one. And vice versa.”

  “But I can’t understand her,” Charlena protested.

  Jace smiled and scratched Luna behind the ears, causing her to start purring. “She’ll get your attention if I send her a mental message. Right?”

  The cat didn’t take its head out from the sling, but he heard her response. “Yes.”

  Charlena shrugged and took the sling. She slung it diagonally across her shoulders as Jace had done. “I’m ready.”

  “Alright,” he told them. “The plan is, Charlena and I go out into the dark, see if there are any alligators lurking out there and if so, we pull it in. When it gets here, wait for me to Taunt it before you do damage but once I do, take it down as quickly as possible.”

  The girls muttered their understanding of the plan. After giving Charlena the signal to proceed, Jace moved off in the opposite direction. He stepped out of the light and paused to let his eyes adjust. It took almost a full minute but then shapes began to take shape and Jace swallowed.

  Staring back at him from the darkness were four alligators. They were submerged fifteen or twenty feet away just staring at Jace with those reptilian eyes. Jace wondered if the gators had been here the entire time, following them. That was an unsettling thought since they hadn’t known they were nearby.

  Out of habit, he scanned them in his HUD.

  Sewer Gator

  Level: 5

  “Alligator!” came a voice in his head. It was Luna. Charlena must have pulled one of the alligators. Jace turned to start back and saw the gators behind him surge forward.

  “Alligator! Alligator! Alligator!” came the voice and Jace cursed aloud. The alligators were linked! Pulling one of them had aggroed the ones around him, like a swarm.

  “Incoming!” He yelled and ran back to the group. He looked behind him to see the gators closing the distance quickly. He activated his Air Armor to increase his Defense. Now that his Air Magic skill was maxed, the spell gave him a total of 3 Defense. Combined with his armor, buckler and abilities, his Defense jumped up to 10.

  Entering the globe of light, he could see Charlena moving towards the other two. He also saw four alligators coming into the sphere, swimming after her. One of them had an arrow in its head.

  Jace made it to the group right before the first gator reached Charlena. The ones following him were only a few feet from him and he shouted out his Taunt. “Get over here!”

  As the ability washed over the seven alligators, they immediately switched their focus to Jace.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 1 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Jace winced as one of the alligator’s bites got through his armor, driving its large teeth into his thigh. Charlena fired an arrow at one, while Mika slammed one with his mace and Diana just stood there open-mouthed, starin
g down at the alligators.

  You stab Sewer Gator for 4 damage.

  You stab Sewer Gator for 1 damage.

  Sewer Gator is Poisoned.

  Jace had aimed at the same one Charlena had shot twice but his strikes barely penetrated the alligator’s hide. His damage was disappointing, and he knew the creatures must have thick skin that acted as armor.

  “Everyone,” Jace grimaced. “Focus on a single target. Kill it then move on to the next one.”

  Mika nodded and switched her focus. Diana seemed to snap out of her stupor and began casting a spell. Unfortunately, the gators were faster.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Poison hits Sewer Gator for 3 damage.

  This time, the gators didn’t break through his Defense and their jaws slid off his legs. Jace stabbed back at the same gator’s head, hitting it twice

  You stab Sewer Gator for 5 damage.

  You stab Sewer Gator for 1 damage.

  Sewer Gator is Poisoned.

  Almedha Pressalor shoots Sewer Gator for 6 damage.

  Raajoget crushes Sewer Gator for 3 damage.

  Mizzlethain-galliegarde burns Sewer Gator with Flame Bolt for 4 fire damage.

  Jace was momentarily confused by the system messages until he remembered that Mika’s character name was Raajoget and Diana was Mizzlethain-galliegarde. At least they were all on the same target.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.

  Sewer Gator bites YOU for 0 damage.