End Online: Volume 3

by D Wolfin

  I stand there for a good five minutes before actually doing anything.

  “Lost… I have some good news and bad news.” I hesitantly send a private message to the party leader.

  “Oh? What are they? Hopefully the bad news isn’t too bad, so start with that.”

  “If you insist… Well, the bad news is, that I was caught following the girl.”

  “Oh no! Doesn’t that mean we’ve failed the quest!? Please, what’s the good news?”

  “I found out what she was up to. I was caught at the end, but I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. It seemed like an unavoidable situation at least.”

  Lost let out a sigh over the private chat before speaking again.

  “I doubt it was unavoidable. But anyway, I think we still may have passed. Thank you for your help Verde, really. Meet back at the inn in an hour?”

  I blushed when I heard his gratitude for my help. Being of use to him really made me feel warm inside.

  “Okay! I will see you there in an hour!”

  ***************************************************

  ***************************************************

  -Lost-

  I am quite shocked and worried when I first hear that Verde was spotted. Part of the quest description was not to get caught, after all. But it seems like she only got caught at the very end, when we discovered what Rix’s daughter was doing with the bread. As it turns out, she was giving it to a mysterious boy outside of town every morning.

  Dropping the thought for the time being, there is still an hour before I have to meet up with Verde to turn the quest in.

  “Sorry, Mouse. I like you, but there is no extra room for any party members.”

  Well, there is room for one more player. Our sixth party member is technically my companion, Fen. As I recall, it is possible to have a party with more than six members, but only six players will get experience, and it will be less than if the party contained just those six players.

  “Aww, come on,” Mouse conjects to me, “We have known each other for quite some time. How ’bout if I just travel with you? I won’t join your party or anything.”

  I give it some thought. The deal itself should not impact me at all, but that is the thing, I don’t see what is in it for him. If he came to Grenton to do business with more people, why is he offering to leave that to play with me? Something about it seems suspicious.

  “Hah, I will have to pass. Even if you are around level one hundred and fifty like you say, we don’t really need any help.”

  I give him my best smile to try stay on his good side. Seeing me, he just lets out a sigh.

  “Oh well. Maybe one of these days I will get to have a good adventure.”

  ‘What do you mean by that? If you are such a high level why do you need us for a good adventure?’

  I sincerely wanted to say those words out loud, but I thought better of it.

  “You will get one eventually. I am sure of it. Anyway, I best be off.”

  Taking my new ‘Tunic of Toxication’, I head off to go find the auction house in order to sell that ”Nightingale’ Helmet’.

  The new clothing item I got came out as an ‘epic’ rarity item. I guess the materials themselves weren’t too bad. Even Mouse was incredibly surprised when he got them back from his ‘friend’, or so he said.

  Tunic of Toxication (Brown)

  A tunic made from 'Tattered Mouldy Leather' which has retained the toxicity of the material. Due to being such a small quantity of materials, the wearer will slowly build up immunity towards toxins.

  Due to the material being so frail, durability will slowly drop. This item cannot be repaired.

  Requirements

  - Mnd 33

  Defence: 0

  Durability: 10/10

  Abilities:

  - 20 poison damage every 10 seconds

  - Durability will drop by 1 every 10 minutes.

  - Poison resistance will permanently increase by 1% for every straight ten minutes of wearing this item.

  - Acid resistance will permanently increase by .5% for every straight ten minutes of wearing this item.

  ***************************************************

  I was somewhat disappointed with the auction house. The cathedral had looked slightly different from the one back in Iceridge, even made out of some kind of incredibly dark timber, but the interior was practically the exact same. They even had an extremely annoying receptionist.

  Nonetheless, I got all my business done. I put up the helmet up for a two week auction at a starting price of twenty dollars, exactly the same as last time.

  Once all the business was done, I head off straight for the Gold Run Inn.

  Inside the inn, I meet up with everyone else, where they all happen to be drinking large pints of ale. Even Verde has a large frothy cup of ale in front of her. Under the brim of her hood, I can see a little bit of that froth on her nose.

  As soon as one of them spots me, they all stand up and follow me over to go see Rix. Fires of fury lit in the innkeeper’s eyes as soon as he spots me walking up to him. Being the leader of the party who accepted the quest, naturally I am the one he will defer to.

  “Ah you’re back! I will have a word with you! My daughter came back covered in tears and snot this morning. Care to explain yourselves?”

  “I’m sorry Rix.” I give him a voice as sincere as I can manage, which is probably pointless given the intimidating aura my class skill gave off. “We were discovered by your daughter at the same time as we discovered where she was running off with that bread.”

  “W-What! I told you not to get caught!” His anger continues to rise, most of the players in the inn have stopped talking and were keenly listening in to our conversation. “A… Anyway, tell me. What exactly was happening each morning?”

  “Sir, your daughter was taking the bread each morning and meeting a young boy outside the walls. I don’t know exactly what they got up to as we were discovered as soon as we caught her.”

  Rix doesn’t say anything back. I also explain how he had run off saying he couldn’t come back again but he seems completely oblivious to everything after hearing the word ‘boy’.

  Finally, after regaining a fraction of his calm, he speaks once more.

  “So that’s it.” His voice is quiet, but it contains a ferocity I never want to be on the receiving end of. “How dare this ‘boy’ sneak around to see me daughter. Lost, I don’t care what you have to do. Find this ‘boy’, and bring him to me!”

  Your quest has been successfully completed

  Due to the nature of the quest, all party members have gained +5 Infamy.

  ‘What kind of reward is that?! This was a rare quest, and the reward was detrimental!’

  I scream in my mind at the useless reward, but I am shortly interrupted by a new quest appearing in front of me.

  Quest: Bring the mysterious 'boy' to Rix

  The innkeeper of the Gold Run Inn, Rix, has demanded you to locate the mysterious 'boy' that his daughter was secretly meeting.

  You may not refuse this quest. Failure will lead to Rix becoming highly hostile.

  Grade: Blue

  Chapter 16 – In Search of ‘The Mysterious Boy

  -Lost-

  As soon as I complete my quest, my world fills with shock. I worked so hard to do a good deed for another person. Yet the reward was not only worthless, it was detrimental.

  +5 Infamy

  I read that one point over and over again. At the same time, I notice everyone else’s faces darken. I have no doubts in my mind that they are feeling exactly the same as I am.

  With the new quest that he offers me, however, another piece of my heart seems to blacken. Not only can I not refuse the quest, but it may potentially end with another negative reward if I am not careful.

  “H-how could I possibly refuse you?” My voice stutters a bit, still feeling dismay.

  “Good, now go find him,” Rix speaks in a l
ow threatening tone before turning around and returning to his duties.

  I face the rest of my party members and inhale a deep breath.

  “So, what now?” I ask them without any expectations.

  “Well, you’re the leader. Is it not up to you to decide where we go next?” Mason gives me a wry smile, forcing the responsibility of decision making solely onto me.

  I forcefully resign myself, accepting that I will need to give everyone a direction to move in.

  “We need to find that boy somehow,” I sigh, thinking how difficult it is going to be. “Do we have any clues as to where he is?”

  “I also don’t know what he looks like.” Matrix appears somewhat shy as he speaks out. This is a serious issue, how can we find this kid if we don’t know what he looks like?

  “He is the same height as Rix’s daughter. He also wears cheap brown clothes and a beanie on his head.” Verde gives a rough description of the boy. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for me.

  “There are bound to be a lot of boys with that description. Also, there is no guarantee that he will be wearing the same clothes when we find him right? The fact that he appears to be from a poor family does narrow our search down slightly. However, we can’t assume his looks based off what he was wearing. Did you notice anything unique about him, Verde?”

  She pouts slightly as I explain to her that we need more.

  “Not that I saw.”

  “My lady!” Prince Charming raises his voice, cutting off everyone else mid thought, “The VL automatically records the last six hours of gameplay from your perspective. It isn’t much good for making a video, but you should be able to get a picture of what this boy looks like from it.”

  That is an excellent idea. If we have a picture of the boy it will make recognizing him all that much easier.

  “But how am I supposed to show it to everyone?” Verde asks. “I can’t exactly bring the image into the game.”

  Mason suddenly raises his hand, bringing it to be next to his head while extending one finger up.

  “There should be two options to do that. The first is utilize one of the ‘friend’ functions of the VL. By registering us as friends you can invite us into your personal locker. From there, we should be able to view the image from the memory unit.”

  Verde shows some awkwardness about the idea, but Mason then raises another finger.

  “Option two. You get the image of the boy and upload it to the End Forums. From there, the rest of us will be able to look at your post with the picture. It shouldn’t matter if half the players on the internet see it. They have no information on our quest so they will probably ignore it.”

  Verde seems to ponder, casting her head down as she thinks.

  “I will upload the picture to the forums,” she exclaims. “It will probably take a bit of time before I manage to though. Once I do, I will post it as ‘The Mysterious Boy’.”

  “I guess that is it.” I produce a clap of my hands to get everyone’s attention. “The time in real life should be quite late. Shall we meet back here tomorrow morning at nine?”

  It is a fair opinion, the current time in real life was currently well past midnight. It is actually surprising how everyone is still online. That prince has university that he apparently attends and Verde doesn’t exactly play full time either.

  Everyone nods their head as I offer to meet up at nine in the morning. The good thing about this game being eighteen plus is that there is little need to worry about school times. It would be incredibly inconvenient trying to play with someone that could only put in about four to five hours a day.

  I open my game menu and select to log out. Back in the real world, I slowly open my eyes to the darkness in my room.

  Next to my bed, my clock is faintly ticking away. It is currently 1:47am. Strangely enough, I don’t feel tired. Sitting up on the bed wide awake, I wonder what I should do next.

  My computer has a small LED blinking, indicating that it is currently in sleep mode. Using both my hands to shift myself, I drag my body off the bed and into the chair.

  A few minutes later, I am in front of my computer, the End Forums open in front of me.

  On the main page is simply the most recent popular posts. There is one about a player caller Uldermaen, one of the current top players. He is at a massive level 251 and currently exploring some high level dungeon that most people would require a full party to safely enter.

  Second is some form of news show about what is currently happening in the game. The coverage seems to be centered on the main cities, but it includes information from the entire continent that we play on.

  “Currently, in Swordbreak, the guild ‘Silver Blades’ has been rising in popularity at a tremendous speed. For a guild that only started a month ago, it now has over two thousand members and is still getting bigger. It is simply unfortunate that they are accepting simply everyone who applies.”

  “Next on the agenda, is a bounty in Grenton, the capital of Forste. A player started a fire in some small alley, which in turn led to a total of five and a half buildings being burnt down. The bounty is for fifty gold, a massive amount for most bounties. Apparently, the high bounty is due to it being a special case. The first was incredibly slow spreading and no matter what people tried, they simply could not put out the fire! It raged for a full six hours according to witness reports.”

  I stop the video, guilt tracking through my mind. I do not look at the footage of the fire, but I can recall the kind of fire that it must be. If only someone had thought to use a burn remedy, then they would surely have been able to extinguish it.

  I only wanted to test out my new skill, but I can’t believe how careless I was!

  I search for ‘The Mysterious Boy’ in hopes that Verde has already made the post. A lot of posts involving the word ‘mysterious’ or ‘boy’ show up, but there were none with that exact title.

  Expecting to be waiting for at least an hour, I read through the general in game news while I wait.

  ***************************************************

  ***************************************************

  -Mason-

  I sit in front of my computer with a bowl of rice noodles with beef in front of me. I search through the End Forums for Verde’s post with the picture of this boy that we will be looking for.

  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been posted yet.

  I open my account and follow a link to my most recent video. The recording took me an entire day to edit, but it was worth the effort in the end. The finished product gave me more pride than anything of mine that predates it.

  Mostly due to the fact that I have been so busy with playing the game, but up till this point, I haven’t had a proper chance to check up on the video.

  As I open the link to it my stomach drops. It is not the feeling of dread that would usually cause this reaction, but one of complete and utter disbelief.

  My last few videos were the ones that received the highest views, a little over a thousand each. But this current video so far has just hit forty eight thousand views, with over a hundred comments already.

  Horderz | My god! How can a player possibly move that fast? Does he have some kind of equip that triples his speed??

  Trezz | Hacker alert! This guy is clearly using hacks to up his speed.

  Hack | Trezz, are you serious? It is impossible to hack this game. You should get your facts right before you start accusing people of nonsense.

  Pope | That lost guy is amazing! Although, I am a completely envious of that Fen girl. My party needs a good mage, come join me!

  Gulsen | Pope, I second that motion. She can even cast magic silently which next to nobody has figured out how to do. If you can get her, you can count me in that party as well.

  Pope | No way! I won't be sharing her with anyone else!

  Hilhen | Did anybody notice that other new girl. I only got a short glimpse at about half her face, but she was a real beauty as well. Why can't I get any c
ute girls to play with me? So unfair!

  Yureena | You guys can't get pretty girls like us because you are always staring at other girls! Geez, you never learn.

  The conversation that started in the comments just kept on going with no end. A lot of people were wondering about where this new dungeon was and such. But most of them were curious about Lost, who showed his incredible speed, and Fen, the stunning girl who could silently cast magic.

  But there is one thing that is a definite, having Lost and the others in my videos is an incredible thing.

  Next, I look up the revenue that this video has made. There are three advertisement slots on this video as usual and they are all sold. Each spot sold for about a hundred dollars each which is surprising. But I know that if they had sold when the video had gained this much interest, then surely it would have been a lot more.

  I go back to the main page of the site and run another search on ‘The Mysterious Boy’. The post I am looking for comes up directly. It was even posted by the player Verde. This is definitely the post I have been waiting on.

  There is no text or message with the image. It is simply the title of the post with the image of the boy in the body of the message.

  I get what Verde meant when she said this boy looks like he comes from a poor family. His clothes, while stitched together excellently, are made from some low quality material.

  Now that I understand what this boy looks like, I head off to bed. Our parents can’t really afford much and we have sold off a lot of things, so my brother and I share the same bed.

  ‘Fortunately, it is a decent sized bed’ I think to myself as I climb into my side of it.

  ***************************************************

  ***************************************************

  -Lost-

  As soon as I wake up in the morning, I have some cereal for breakfast before putting the VL on and entering virtual reality.

  I receive a bit of a shock when I enter my locker. Fen is sitting cross legged on the couch watching some breakfast news show on the tv. She is so intent on watching it that she doesn’t even notice that I am there.