by D Wolfin
In my mind, I have a sudden flashback of when I was told that my two younger sisters were taken away from me and custody was given to my distant aunt, who I have no clue of her location.
“Forgive me.” I say gently to the lady. “I understand exactly how hard it can be to have someone taken away from you. But please don’t think that this is that sort of case.”
The female else slowly lifts her head, her teary eyes filled with distrust and fear.
“There is a small matter that I need him to come with me for. I promise I will bring him back in a day or two.” If this mother adamantly refuses to let me take him, I’m not entirely sure I will be able to follow through anymore with completing this quest.
“H-he has done n-nothing! Please, I will give you anything!”
I notice that the guards have drawn nearby, listening to our conversation as they prepare to attack at a moments notice.
“Unfortunately he has done something.” The woman’s eyes slightly widen in shock at my words, but still completely fearing me. Of course, this is the effect of my intimidating aura.
“He has been making contact with a young girl in the nearby city of Grenton.” I continue, “I have been asked by her father to find this boy. I promise no harm will come to him, the girls father is just a little overprotective.”
The boy on my shoulder suddenly overcoming his fear and in a panic, starts to struggle in my grip while screaming “Let me go!”. However, he is only a weak child and can’t break free or cause any damage.
The mother of the child shows more fear than ever before. Not just at me, but also at her son for some reason. At the same time one of the guards fearfully steps forward. “H-human, are you s-saying this boy has been contacting other humans?”
At these words, the kid’s mother looks between the elf male and me as if her whole world just came crashing down on top of her.
“That is the case. But please don’t think I mean to take this child away permanently or harm him.”
“I’m sorry,” The elf bites his lower lip and tilts his head towards the ground as tears begin to well up in his eyes, “What happens to this child and the mother are no longer our responsibility.”
“Hon’ar! Please, no! He is just a child!” The lady cries out to the male elf with her whole body shaking, fresh tears streaming down her face
“He is, meaning he is your responsibility. You both must be punished for breaking our law against willingly coming into contact with the humans. I really wish there was another way Shai’en, we have been a couple for six years, but as long as we remain exiles from humanity we must maintain this law. As by my authority as the leader of the Eldenweiss Community, I Hon’ar, banish Shai’en and her son Shai’lan.”
The woman remains on all fours on the ground, as still and silent as if she was made out of stone. I catch a glimpse of her face and see her eyes painfully squeezed shut.
“Excuse me,” I speak up and interrupt the two. “I promise I won’t let other know about you elves if you are currently hiding, so there should be no need to exile them.”
I honestly feel incredibly guilty right now. This entire mess is caused by me.
“Human,” Hon’ar speaks, starting to overcome his fear after realizing I mean no harm. “This is not about whether you will tell others about us or not. After today we will not be returning to this place anyway now that it has been discovered. The problem is that this is a law decided by us all after we were forcefully removed from our home by the humans.”
“Surely there must be some way! You said you are a couple so you should do everything you can to stay together!”
“The only way would be for me to accomplish that is to accept exile along with Shai’en.”
“NO!” Shai’en calls out, “You can’t Hon’ar! Your responsibilities are too great, this whole community depends on you.”
“As you see,” Hon’ar says to me, “I cannot leave this community. And as long as we have no home and are on the run from humans, I cannot turn a blind eye to this law. Even if it is the person I love.”
“Then what if we get back your home for you. According to what you have said, then it should be fine, right?!”
All the elves look at me with wide eyes of shock.
“Yes,” Hon’ar nods slightly, “That is agreeable. If you can get back our home for us, then we can take her back. No, I can take her back, and finally get married to her beneath the reclaimed ‘Tree of Pink Blossoms’. Human, what is your name?”
“M-my name is Lost.” I stammer out in shock, seeing where this is leading,
“Lost, on behalf of the leader of the Eldenweiss Community, I Hon’ar, request you to liberate our home of Eltreant in the northern forest from the vile bandits occupying it.”
Quest: Liberate Eltreant
Hon'ar has requested for you to liberate the elves home of Eltreant from the human bandits that stole it from them. The city is located in the far northern forest of Forste.
Failure will lead to Shai'en and her son forever becoming an exile.
Grade: Purple
‘A legendary quest!’
“I accept your request. I honestly do not wish for these two to be exiled. But if I can have them rejoin your community then I will be truly happy.”
You have accepted the quest.
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-Mikhail-
“Mikhail, get over here! Now!” Henry calls out to me who is sitting in my small office with my eyes staring at the white ceiling.
“Y-yes boss.” I call back as I hurriedly get out of my seat and rush over. “What is it?”
“We have a serious problem.” Henry’s brows furrow more than I have ever seen them do so before. “I just received a call from a very powerful man. Apparently something related to our game has damaged his daughters mind. Scrambled her memories, or so he said.”
“Henry, could he be making this up?”
“People of his calibre don’t just “make things up”.”
I feel my face turn ashen, thinking of what the consequences could be.
“He has demanded we hand over all server memory footage and data of his daughters in game experiences in hopes of finding out exactly what happened. Neither he nor I thinks this is a simple hardware fault.”
“S-sir, could it be-“
“I don’t know!” he cuts me off, “But it is your job to find out before we hand over any footage. The name of the person is Verity Lee, so go from that to find her player name and locate all game footage. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
I rush off to the server room where I plug in my portable computer to access the long term memory data. The server itself has such a massive memory base that it can store a total of twelve months worth of data that can be turned into a full scale footage of the entire continent, allowing us to locate players and find out what they have been up to and where they have been.
I input the personal information data of the players real life name. A few seconds later, I receive her in game information.
“Hrmm. Her in game name is Verde, level 94, practically a street thief built class.”
I run a query on the game server to collect her past six months of activity into a video file that I can export and run through after.
ERROR!
Data cannot be found.
Surprise shows on my face. This should be technically impossible. Unless…
“Xilbril, are you hiding something from me?” I whisper while staring at the two hundred cube server array.
Knowing I am not going to get anything further from here, I head back to see Henry and let him know the situation.
“Henry, it appears Xilbril won’t let me access the video footage in regards to this person for some reason. It is the same kind of denial I got when trying to find out where that child AI went.”
“Mikhail, tell me honestly. Could
they be related.”
“I suspect they are, but I have no proof. I think this girl may have had contact with the child AI. It could have been that AI itself that caused this mess.”
Henry pulls out a cigarette and lights it up, inhaling a few deep breaths before speaking again.
“Okay, I got it. Leave this one to me for now. By the way, have you played End Online much?”
“No, why do you ask.”
“Take the day off, go buy a copy and study up on playing it. You may need to really go ‘into the field’ shortly.”
“What are you saying?”
“No questions, now go.”
I leave Henry’s office, and make sure to grab my coat and bag before heading out to buy the game our company produced and maintains for some odd reason.
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-Henry-
“Mr. Lee, sorry for calling you back so soon. I have something to quickly discuss with you.”
“What would that be?” Mr. Lee speaks in a rather unfriendly tone right from the start.
“I am truly sorry to say this, but we are unable to provide you with the footage you requested.”
“Excuse me, are you saying you lost it? Or you never had it in the first place when you should have?”
He may have been on the other end of a telephone call, but I still feel the temperature of the room around me drop a few degrees from him frigid tone.
“N-no, that isn’t it. It is simply company policy that prevents us from handing it out.”
“How much will it cost?”
“Pardon?”
“I said, how much will it cost. Give me a number and I will make it happen.”
I am perfectly aware of how filthy rich this man is. He could probably buy the entire city of Taile if he wanted to.
“I’m sorry sir, but this is not a matter that can be solved through money.”
“Well why don’t I buy your company then. I will even begin a hostile takeover if this is what it is going to take.”
The man speaks in a tone even colder than before, sending a full shiver up my spine. I am a fully grown man who is actually quite tough, but this man is giving me a chilling fear simply over the phone.
Well, he couldn’t buy this company even if he wanted to. Idea Imagine is a subsidiary of Virtue, which is not a publicly listed company. When Virtue wanted to raise capital for its goals, instead of turning to the share market it started selling the V-Link. Without shares to sell or buy, nobody can buy this company unless the owners decide to sell.
“However, Mr. Lee, I do have a thought that can help. How about we have her rejoin the game and send in experts to monitor her.”
“Do you expect me to let my daughter go back into a game that caused her current state?”
“Please understand, this is the only solution I can think of. We will personally send in some employees to constantly monitor her. You can have your own bodyguards join her as well for safety. At least to help her recover her memories. We consider this to be a very serious incident.”
A period of silence comes over the phone conversation while sweat trickles down my forehead.
“Very well. You will send in your moderators and I will send in my bodyguards to protect her. If anything even looks like it could go wrong, I will personally hold you accountable and take every penny that you and your company own. You have my word on that.”
“W-we will definitely not let anything happen.”
“Good. Now, I have arrangements to make. You have two weeks to arrange things on your side. Goodbye.”
I make a quick phone call to Mikhail and let him know the information, and that he is to play the game for two weeks stopping only for food. He is to focus on raising his level to a sufficient point where he can play the game as this girl’s helper.
I let out a sigh that everything had worked out. All I need to do now is track down that rogue AI before it causes any more damage. That is my number one priority.
Chapter 18 – The Second Grand Inferno
-Lost-
I slowly lower the little boy, Shai’lan, down onto the ground. Rather than running straight to his mother, he looks at me defiantly with a snot covered face, his whole body shaking.
“I-it’s all y-your fault!” He shouts up at me.
“Shai’lan!” Shai’en, his mother, calls out in an icy voice. “Stop it at once!”
“Shai’lan, was it?” The voice of Mason sounds from over my shoulder. “I’m not saying that everything is your fault. But surely you realize we would not be here in the first place if it were not for you.”
I didn’t have a clue when the elder of the two brothers got behind me. He must have crept over during the confusion and overheard the conversation.
The child gives him a stubborn look, but he immediately stops talking nonetheless.
Shai’en doesn’t move, still collapsed in a kneeling position with her hands on her knees and head slumped down. Half her hair is tucked behind one of her pointy ears while the rest hangs limply down past her face.
“Shai’en,” I speak softly, the elf slowly looks up at me. “I don’t exactly know what to do now. I honestly did not mean for things to get this complicated. But, it looks like there is a way to go back. For now, what will you do until we can get your homeland back?”
“I have nowhere else to go now that I have no home. But do you truly think you can fight off a group of bandits large enough to cause the entire elven population to flee from our capital city?”
“We will get rid of them.”
Truthfully, I have no idea how to get rid of them. Hopefully they only number in the thousands and can be slowly picked off in small groups. The elves don’t appear to be that strong according to what I saw from those town guards earlier. They have extremely good aim, but with no courage behind them, they can only be seen as weak.
Shai’en remains silent, looking at me with lifeless eyes full of disbelief.
“I think that about wraps it up!” Mason clears the air and causes all of us to blink a few times as he randomly claps his hands together, making a loud sound that echoes throughout the forest.
I walk over to the elf on the ground and extend an open hand to help her up. She places a shaking palm onto mine which I firmly grasp and give a strong pull, hauling her up onto her feet.
“I think you will need something to cover your ears at the very least.” Mason says to the elves, “Else I am afraid it might cause a bigger stir than it is worth.”
The mother nods and leads her son to a small house nearby. Only earlier, I found it strange how there were no doors on the houses. Yet, as she closes in on the house, the bramble wall comes alive and separates into a doorway to let them in.
They emerge from the house a few minutes later, each carrying a small sack and wearing a piece of headwear to hide their ears. The boy is wearing a dirty brown beanie, the same one that I saw in the picture of ‘The Mysterious Boy’. Meanwhile, his mother is wearing a white scarf on her head, the tails of the fabric falling down over one shoulder amongst her straight green hair.
Their hair may be an odd colour, but it is possible to dye the hair in the game so nobody should think anything much of it.
I start to lead the way to the edge of the clearing, where Matrix and Fen are still waiting. I see Matrix practising his sword swings while having a battle with an imaginary enemy. Fen, on the other hand, is standing off to the side with a grumpy look on her face.
“It is time for us to head back now,” I say to the two of them, “We need to head back to town, finish the current quest, then resupply before heading out to the northern forests to reclaim the elvish capital. I’m sure you received the quest notification so you already know.”
“I know.” Matrix says full of excitement, “That’s why I am, umm, practising for when we get there.”
While leaving the clearing and entering
the forest, the sun finally falls below the horizon and the last few strands of light dissipate. A few moments later, the moon climbs into the sky, sending rays of moonlight through small gaps in the foliage and shrouding the forest in eerie shadows that dance with the wind.
For a while, no one says a word or even dares to breath too loudly. We all focus on our surroundings completely spooked, almost as if a creature of nightmares could appear at any moment. Luckily, The only sounds around us are a few nocturnal birds and the wind rustling the leaves above us.
“Lost, are you sure nothing will happen to us?” Shai’en breaks the silence, whispering to me in a melodic voice quiet enough that I almost missed it.
“As long as no one finds out you are an elf, there shouldn’t be any problems.” I whisper back just as quietly, only, my voice doesn’t sound as gentle as hers.
“But… This man that you are taking my son to. I-I’m scared.”
“There is no need to be,” I let out a sigh. I have already lost count of how many times I have tried to tell her that this isn’t something to worry about, “He is just an overprotective father that doesn’t like boys near his daughter. He doesn’t mean any harm, just doesn’t want his precious daughter to ‘fall prey to some boy’. Or something like that.”
“I still feel uneasy.”
Shai’en remains silent after that. Except, she couldn’t maintain it for long and starts talking again barely five minutes later.
“Lost. You know, you are surprisingly a nice person.”
“W-what?” I stammer out, confused as to what thoughts caused those words.
“I mean, something about your aura makes me feel absolutely terrified. Almost like at any moment you could suddenly grab me and throw me to the ground. Then, using your bare hands, rip my clothes to shreds before you-“
“Stop!” I cut her off mid thought. “Please don’t go any further than that.”
I can see how crimson her face is at the moment even in this darkness. As can everybody else who have now stopped walking to turn their heads at me with their jaws dropped. Even Fen is staring in complete shock.