Veil Online - Book 1 (a LitRPG MMORPG Adventure Series)

by John Cressman

  Like a real geek, Jace was one of the people who had taken the time to learn it. He couldn’t quite speak it, but he could read it. He poured over the letters, reading from right to left.

  Welcome to the City of Crystalburrow. Let those with evil in their heart be warned: The immortal guardians stand ever vigilant.

  Jace frowned. This was not the tomb of the necromancer. This was something much older. Had Jebediah misled him? Or had he really believed this was Mimira Sanguis’ tomb? Was this even the same place the old man had sent Charlena? Or was there really an actual tomb for the necromancer?

  Thinking back to the bits of armor he’d seen on the way here, he had to assume that the undead were coming from here. If that were the case, then perhaps Jebediah and the other villagers did believe this was the tomb of Mimira Sanguis. After all, a common villager wouldn’t understand Veteribium or even recognize it as the language of the Ancients.

  Still, something didn’t feel right. But one thing was clear to Jace now. If this really was a Veteribus rune, it could hold untold dangers and possibly the ability to permadeath characters. He needed to go after Charlena, but he needed to be careful. Very careful.

  Jace looked down at Luna. “Ready to explore an ancient city that could kill us?”

  His familiar gave him a cat look that he guessed translated into ‘Are you crazy?’ and meowed, “No.”

  “Yeah, me either,” Jace said. He took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.

  Chapter 21

  Jace was able to enter the doorway with no issues. In VEIL, there was nothing that prevented a low level player from entering a high level zone - one that would surely mean death and losing your body. However, after many complaints the first year, WorldCog had created a system that helped to warn players they were walking to their own death. If a dungeon or area was more than 10 levels higher than the player, they would feel a strong sense of foreboding. The greater the level difference between the player and the monsters, the greater the sense of foreboding.

  Since he hadn’t felt anything as he walked through the threshold, it meant either everything was within 10 levels of him or his character was corrupted, he hadn’t sensed the foreboding. He was tempted to ask Luna, but guessed her reactions were based off of his. In the end, it didn’t matter, he still needed to find Charlena, so he looked around the room he’d just entered.

  There was a lot of rubble in the initial entry way that Jace had to climb over and he wondered if there had been some sort of earthquake or rockslide that might have opened up the city’s entrance. As soon as he moved away from the doorway, there was very little ambient light so Jace activated his Cat-Vision.

  With his enhanced vision, he could see that he was in a large chamber, perhaps sixty feet long by thirty feet deep. The domed ceiling was a good forty feet above him but parts of it looked to have collapsed.

  It appeared that there had once been a statue in the middle of the room, but it lay scattered across the floor along with sections of the ceiling.

  Focusing on the floor, he could clearly make out sets of footprints that marred the dust covered floor. Most of them appeared to have been made by skeletal feet. It appeared that would confirm that this was the source of the undead that had been plaguing the village.

  Jace also found a set of small booted footprints. He bent down and examined them in his HUD, activating his Tracking skill.

  Your Tracking skill has increased by 1.

  Tracks:

  Elf

  The trail of tracks was slightly illuminated and according to his Tracking skill, the tracks definitely belonged to an elf. Unfortunately, his skill was too low to identify the specific owner. But since this was a human area and Charlena had been the only elf he’d seen so far, he could assume they were hers.

  “Charlena,” he said aloud.

  Luna walked over the tracks and sniffed several times before she looked up at Jace. “Yes.”

  “You can smell her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl.”

  Luna sat back on her haunches and looked smug and Jace reached over to pet her head.

  “Let’s go find her before she gets into trouble,” Jace said.

  “Yes.”

  There were three exits from the main chamber he was now on. The tracks lead down the center passage. Worriedly, Jace noticed this was the same passage that the skeletons had emerged from. “That’s not good.”

  Luna seemed to realize the same thing. “No.”

  Jace wanted to call out to her but doing so could alert the skeletons. He was sure if they were only active on nights of the full moon, or if they only came out on those nights. Trying to call out could put her into more danger than not doing so.

  Motioning to Luna, he activated his Stealth skill and entered the center passage. The passage immediately began sloping down. Jace remembered that originally the Veteribus had cities on the surface but some catastrophe happened, and their latter cities were built underground. In fact, he knew of at least one dwarven city that was actually built by the Veteribus.

  The passage looked to be about 10 feet wide and 8 feet tall, enough for several people to move side by side. Or one really big monster. He pushed his fears down and continued moving through the gloomy passage.

  He’d traveled about 100 yards when the passage widened into a small circular chamber. There were three other exits from the chamber. There was one to the right, one to the left and one that continued in the same direction. Using his Tracking skill again, he was able to see her tracks going off the left. Once again, it was the same direction as the skeleton tracks. Was she trying to die?!

  Jace shook his head. No, she was following the only tracks she could see, trying to find him. And she might be walking straight into a room full of undead. He needed to move faster.

  “Come on,” he whispered and quickened his pace. Beside him, Luna silently kept pace. As she ran, she was constantly sniffing the air. He hoped she would be able to warn him before they ran into anything terrible.

  The passage split several more times and Jace continued to follow her tracks. From using the Tracking skill earlier and then her in the dungeon, he finally got his 10th rank and received a new ability Identify Tracks.

  When he saw the system message, he bent down and examined the tracks again. With the new ability, he’d now at least see who they belonged to.

  Tracks:

  Almedha Pressalor (Elf)

  He let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Luna’s nose, he just appreciated the confirmation. At least now he knew for certain he was on the right trail and he picked up his pace.

  At the very edge of his vision, he saw a flash of light. It was bright at first, then went dull.

  “Ahhh!” A scream echoed down the passageway.

  The voice came from up ahead and it was definitely a woman’s voice. The echo and reverberation distorted it, but it had to be her. Unless there were other women hanging around in an underground dungeon built by an ancient race.

  Jace ran towards the light as fast as he could and nearly. As he got nearer, he could see the light was coming from the floor. No, not the floor. It was coming from a partially closed pit on the floor. It was partially open with a bow sticking out. He rushed over to it and saw there was a slim hand still grabbing the bow, which was the only thing keeping the pit from closing.

  “Charlena?” he called, no longer caring if the undead heard him.

  “Jace?” Came a muffled voice.

  “Yeah,” he said as he grabbed her hand and started to pull.

  “Pull me up! Pull me up!” she cried frantically.

  Now that he was closer, he could see down into the pit. About 20 feet below Charlena was a swirling vortex. The vortex shimmered and rotated but in the middle was the scene of the outdoors with large, snow-capped mountains in the background. It was a portal. And if Charlena fell into it, she would be transported to wherever it led.

  Grabbing her wri
st, Jace leaned back and began to pull her up. He only had a 10 Strength, but she was light and soon she began to move upward.

  “Don’t let go!” she begged as her legs worked to find purchase.

  “I won’t,” Jace promised. Inch by inch, he pulled her up. As he did, the scene in the middle of the vortex changed and it was a barren wasteland surrounded by volcanic mountains. Jace pulled harder. Finally, her other arm cleared the put and she was able to help pull herself out.

  With one final heave, he pulled her free of the pit and she landed on top of him.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” she panted. “I thought I’d be sent to who knows where.”

  “It’s okay,” he told her. A strange thought occurred to him as she lay on top of him. “Isn’t this the way we met?”

  She stopped and looked down at him underneath him and then began to laugh. “Actually, I think you were on top.”

  Jace grinned. “And we weren’t wearing clothes.”

  They both laughed and Charlena rolled off of him onto the floor. “Where the heck were you? I came in here to find you.”

  Jace grimaced. “You actually beat me in here. Jebediah told me an elf had asked for some ‘Jason’ guy and demanded to know where the tomb was. I figured out where you went and came here as soon as possible.”

  Her voice turned angry. “Yeah! I was looking for you! I went into town looking for you and the mayor said you went to investigate some undead tomb or something and that the old guy on the last farm knew where it was. He said you left fifteen minutes before me. He said you probably wouldn’t be back.”

  Lying on his back, he couldn’t see her expression, but she was obviously frustrated and a little angry. “Sorry. I cut through the forest and…”

  “And what?” she demanded.

  “And we stopped so Luna could chase butterflies,” he said, wincing.

  “Butterflies?” she asked with a deadpan voice.

  “Butterflies.”

  There was a long silence and then he thought he heard her crying, until it got louder, and he realized she was laughing.

  “You are something else,” she said. “By the way, I checked out your story.”

  Jace sat up and faced her. “My story?”

  “Jace Burton, junior programmer for WorldCog,” she repeated as if reading a newspaper clip. “Hit by a truck that ran a red light on his way home from work on April 5th. Pronounced dead at the scene.”

  Jace sat up and looked at her. His heart suddenly felt very heavy. Up until now, part of him hadn’t believed it. Or maybe, part of it hadn’t accepted it. Hearing her say it aloud suddenly made it all too real. He really was dead. This was his life now. “So, I am dead.”

  Charlena sat up and put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I checked the newsfeeds in Philadelphia. I did a search on your name and got a hit in a news article. Sorry I didn’t believe you and freaked out. I mean, you have to admit your story sounds unbelievable.”

  Jace smirked. “Thanks, I think.”

  She punched him playfully. “Hey, a girl’s got to be careful!”

  “That’s right,” he said and gave her a wink. “That virtual sex stuff!”

  She made a face and punched him harder this time. “Is that all you guys think of?”

  Jace shrugged. “We also think about real sex.”

  She rolled her eyes and started to pick herself up. She looked over at the pit. “What was that?”

  “I think it was a trap. My guess is, it was meant to send trespassers to some random part of the world. And if I had to guess, it resets your spawn point when it does it,” he said.

  “Resets your spawn point? Why do you think that?” she asked.

  “Because Jebediah let slip that they’ve had other adventurers check this place out and that no one has ever come back,” he told her.

  “Great! So, what do we do?”

  Smiling, Jace stood up. “We explore of course.”

  Charlena gave him an incredulous look. “We’re going to explore the place no one comes back from? Are you crazy?”

  Jace held his fingers up about an inch apart.

  “A little crazy,” she said. “Why do I not find that hard to believe.” Charlena gestured back to the pit. “And what about the pit? And any others we run across?”

  Jace had seen that there was about a foot of floor on each side of the pit. He guessed that’s how the undead were getting around them. But how did mindless undead know to go around the pits?

  He searched the floor around the pit and found the answer. There were magical runes on the inside of the pit. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected that they were to repel undead.

  “What is it?” asked Charlena as she moved up next to him. “Is that… writing?”

  “Magical runes,” he told her. “Some type of repulsion spell. We can guess what they’re designed to repulse.”

  “Why would they…” she started to ask but worked it out for herself. “To stop the undead from going into the trap.”

  Jace nodded.

  “This isn’t a tomb and those undead aren’t trying to get revenge on the village for King Ackert killing the necromancer,” Jace told her. “Something else is going on.”

  Chapter 22

  Both Jace and Charlena had decided they wanted to explore further. They grouped up and Jace shared the quest from the mayor. Just to make sure one of them didn’t accidentally fall into a pit, Jace tied them together with the rope he had bought and was having Charlena test the passageway for pits with her bow. If one of them fell, the other one could brace against the floor until the other climbed up. At least, in theory.

  He had originally thought to use it to climb someplace safe if the undead caught him in the forest. The plan had been to knot up the rope, climb a tree and tie it onto a branch. Then, if he needed to make a quick escape, he could run to the tree and shimmy up the rope to safety. He’d been in so much of a hurry to reach Charlena, he hadn’t remembered the rope until he’d seen the pit.

  “So, you must really know a lot about this game,” Charlena commented as they continued down the passage. “I mean, you were a level 90-something character, plus you worked for the company who makes the game. You must know all kinds of inside information!”

  Jace smiled. “I know some, but it’s mostly about how the game works. I’m a,” Jace stopped and corrected himself with a pang of sadness. “I WAS a troubleshooter, fixing bugs in the code. I didn’t really do anything with the content. Plus, all the content is under heavy security. They monitor those guys like hawks. If they leak anything, they are not only fired, but sued into poverty.”

  Charlena scrunched up her nose. “That seems a bit draconian. I mean, it’s still just a game.”

  Jace shrugged. “Yes and no. You can transfer real money into the game and you can convert game money into real money. Wherever there’s money, eventually there’ll be someone who wants to exploit it.”

  Jace trailed off as he thought of his own situation. WorldCog had wanted to cover up the bug so badly that they must have killed him and made it look like an accident. He knew how much power they had, it would have been child’s play. That made him very nervous. What if he got to the capital and found the Help Desk and they just covered it up. And worse, what if they found his brain backup and simply deleted it. That was a terrifying and sobering thought.

  “You okay?” Charlena asked beside him.

  “What?”

  “You looked scared or worried just now.”

  He didn’t know how much of his concerns to tell her. She’d come back to tell him about his death and had been willing to go into a “supposed” tomb to do it. He wasn’t sure if she knew about players disappearing or not, or even if she understood the ramifications. She could always just delete her character and create a new one. Jace wasn’t sure that applied to him and he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  “I’m fine,” he lied. “Just remembering that I’m dead.”

  A pained look crossed her fe
atures. “Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I just blurted it out without thinking. In my defense, I had been dangling over a portal to who knows where right before that.”

  “Sometimes you just have to rip the band aid off.” Jace gave her a smile. He understood. That was a devious trap and he had respect for whatever designer came up with the idea. It would be a great way to separate a party or raid. He was actually surprised he hadn’t seen a trap like that before.

  There was an awkward pause and then Charlena asked another question. “What do you think this place is?”

  Happy for the change of topic, Jace related his thoughts about the city and an abbreviated explanation of the Ancient Ones. He also recited the inscription on the door. “Welcome to the City of Crystalburrow. Let those with violence in their hearts be warned: The immortal guardians stand ever vigilant.”

  Frowning, Charlena paused. “So this is like some ancient city that no one’s ever explored?”

  Jace thought about it. “It’s possible. Remember how I said that adventurers had disappeared from here. None returned so maybe they fell victim to the traps. So they may not have made it into the city proper.”

  “That’s exciting then!” She perked up. “We might be the first!”

  Her enthusiasm was infectious and he found himself smiling. “We might be! As long as we’re careful. Remember, we’re following the same path as the skeletons. At some point, we may run into them.”

  That seemed to steal some wind from her sails. “What do we do if that happens?”

  “Probably die,” Jace said honestly.

  Charlena smiled and motioned with her hands. “Come on, think positive!”

  It was Jace’s turn to smile. “Okay, I’m positive we’ll die.”

  Making a dismissive gesture, she playfully punched him on the arm. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” he chuckled. “Hopefully, we’ll think of something. There’s usually more than one way out of situations in this game. You just have to use your head.”