by Lucas Flint
“I wonder how far down this cave goes,” said Bait as we walked.
“Very deeply,” said Olga. “My notes on the Tall Mountains indicate that there is a vast underground cave network spread through and underneath it. Much of it remains unexplored due to the danger of the various creatures that lie within. And, of course, the cave network itself is extremely intricate and easy to get lost in.”
“You mean we might get lost down here and starve to death?” said Switch in alarm. “We have a map, right?”
“Right, but as I said, the caves are mostly unexplored,” said Olga, “although as you explore the caves, your route will be added to your map.”
“So even if we get lost, we’ll still be able to find our way back out,” said Switch. “That’s a relief.”
“Unless we get eaten by the cave monsters somewhere within,” I said, keeping my eyes and ears open and alert for any dangers.
“If some cave monster tries to eat me—” Switch began, before being interrupted by the sound of steel slamming into stone coming from deep inside the cave.
The four of us came to an abrupt halt. We looked ahead, but the darkness of the cave was too thick for us to see very far ahead even with my torch burning brightly.
“What was that?” said Bait, raising his shield defensively. “Did anyone hear that aside from me?”
“We all heard it,” I said, “but—”
I was interrupted by another sound—steel clashing against flesh—and then someone up ahead screamed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The scream was long and loud. It sounded incredibly painful as if the person who was screaming was in pure agonizing pain.
“What is that?” said Switch, staring into the darkness with wide, fearful eyes. “It sounds like someone is dying down there.”
“Someone might be,” I said. “If so, we need to save them.”
“But what if this is a trap?” said Bait doubtfully. “Maybe it’s a monster mimicking human sounds to lure us deeper inside.”
“It sounds too real to be a trap,” I said. “Even if it is, we’re going to have to go in deeper anyway. Might as well go in.”
I rushed down the dark tunnel, drawing my sword from my sheath as I did so. I heard Bait and Switch running behind me, doing their best to keep up with my pace, while Olga fluttered beside me, her wings working furiously to keep propelling her through the air. The scream cut off some time ago, which made me fear for the worst, but I pushed such thoughts out of my mind in order to focus on getting to the person. Whoever it was needed our help and I couldn’t stop now that I was already running.
Soon, I spotted a lantern sitting on the ground not far ahead, with a man kneeling over it, his hands on his head. He seemed to be trying to protect himself from something, but it was impossible to tell what was attacking him until something large and hairy swooped down toward him. The creature tried to slash his back, but the man just barely managed to avoid it by sinking further into the ground.
“Was that a giant bat?” said Switch as we ran. “I hate bats.”
I didn’t say anything. I just put on a burst of speed and swung my sword at a creature just as it swooped down to attack the man.
My blow connected, striking the creature along one of its wings and sending it flying off course. It smashed into the floor and rolled for a couple of feet before coming to a stop, allowing me to Scan it to find out what it was:
Name: Cave Bat
Level: 11
Class: Minion
Affinity: Evil
Health: 23/30
Weakness: Electricity, Light
Cave Bats are a common species of large bat found in most caves in Keoria. Though fragile and easily wounded, their speed makes it hard to land a solid blow on them, particularly if you use melee weapons like swords and axes.
Watch out for their fangs, because once they have sunk into your shoulder, they are almost impossible to remove.
“Switch,” I snapped, looking over at her, “do you have any Electric or Light spells yet?”
Switch shook her head. “No, not yet. I just have my Fire spell.”
“That will have to do because these things are weak to Light,” I said, turning back to face the downed bat, which had gotten back to its feet, though I wasn’t sure it would be able to fly with its wounded wing. “Everyone, protect this guy and make sure the Bats can’t get him!”
As soon as I said that, the Cave Bat I had downed lunged at me with its fangs bared. I sidestepped the incoming Bat, but it spread its wings at the same time and slapped me in the face with one of them, which took a couple of points off my Health. I staggered to the side just as the Cave Bat turned and lunged at me again, its mouth wide open and its fangs gleaming in its jaws.
Unable to dodge, I raised my sword and caught its fangs on my blade. As a result, I got its bad breath—which smelled like blood and rotting flesh—blasted directly into my face, making my eyes water, though I stood my ground against it. Despite having wounded it once already, the Cave Bat was still incredibly strong, pushing against me, its fangs wrapped firmly around my sword’s blade as it cycled between pushing and pulling.
Sweat glistened on my forehead as I did everything in my power to keep the Cave Bat from overpowering me, but it was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I could hear the sounds of Bait and Switch fighting the other Cave Bats behind me, but I was too focused on holding back this one to spare them any attention. All I could do was hope that Bait and Switch would be able to handle their enemies on their own.
With a grunt, I shoved the Cave Bat backward as hard as I could. The Cave Bat staggered backward as I ripped my sword out of its mouth and slashed at its face, taking another few points off of its Health and creating a new bloody wound just above its left eye. The Cave Bat let loose another blood-curdling screech, however, and lunged toward me again, its fangs snapping like the jaws of a shark.
Instinctively, I raised my sword to defend myself, but I was too late and the Cave Bat sunk its fangs into the side of my neck. Pain exploded through my body as I felt the Cave Bat’s knife-like fangs sink into my flesh, making me scream in pain even as a notification popped up on screen:
You have been bitten by a Cave Bat! Your Health will be drained by 5 points per second until they hit zero.
Five points per second? I was going to die if I didn’t do something fast.
Ignoring the screaming pain in my neck, I raised my Iron Sword and stabbed it directly into the side of the Cave Bat. The Cave Bat growled in pain, but it didn’t let go of my neck, still trying to drain my body dry, so I stabbed it again and again until the Cave Bat’s Health hit zero. Then the Cave Bat let go of my neck and I shoved it off my body, where it landed on the ground with a dull thud as its body started bleeding out.
Panting hard, I felt my neck and winced at the pain. My Health was in the critical zone now, but I had managed to save myself, at least. My neck, however, was extremely bloody and I could feel exactly where the Cave Bat’s fangs had sunk into my flesh. If this had been real life, I probably would have died from the shock already, but as it was, I was somehow still standing.
I immediately pulled a Health Potion out of my bag and chugged it down in one go. As I did so, I saw my Health bar refill back to full and felt the wound in my neck heal until it closed entirely. The pain was gone as well, which caused me to sigh in relief as I tossed aside the empty potion bottle. Health Potions didn’t taste very good, but I was glad we had managed to find a few back in the Silent Forest before we got here.
That was when I heard a cry for help and looked around until I spotted Bait and Switch standing near the lamp. Bait had raised his shield over his head, which protected him and Switch from the Bats. But it also prevented them from fighting back, because the Cave Bats took turns swooping in and attacking his shield. Bait’s high Defense meant that each attack did little damage, but I knew that if I didn’t help them soon, the Cave Bats would chip away at his Defense until the
y broke through.
Clutching my sword with both of my sweaty hands, I rushed back to the lantern and swung my sword just as a Cave Bat swooped down close enough to attack Bait and Switch. My sword cut through its neck, instantly dropping the Cave Bat’s Health to zero and sending its head flying off somewhere in the darkness of the tunnel, while its body crashed onto the floor and went still.
“Thanks for the save, man,” said Bait without lowering his shield. “Sorry about that. They just managed to pin us down and—”
A screeching sound above made me look up in time to see a Cave Bat—this one with red eyes, as though it was enraged—swooping down toward me with its claws open. I raised my sword to defend myself, but then Switch held up a hand and shouted, “Fire!”
A large fireball exploded from the palm of her hand, sailed past my face, and slammed into the open mouth of the Cave Bat, going down its throat. The Cave Bat made a choking noise as the fireball went through its system, but I wasn’t going to give it time to react. With a yell, I slashed my sword at its face, cleaving its skull in two and sending it flying off to the side. It crashed into the floor and rolled for a couple of feet before spontaneously combusting, its whole body covered in flames as Switch’s fireball hit its target.
“Whoa,” I said, staring at the burning corpse of the Cave Bat in bewilderment. “That was spectacular.”
“Thanks,” said Switch as she stood up and brushed off her robes. “If we run into more of these things, I’ll be sure to do it again.”
I made a mental note never to piss off Switch again before saying, “Is that it? Are there anymore Cave Bats we need to worry about?”
Bait looked up at the ceiling of the cave and shook his head. “Don’t think so. I think we killed them all.”
“Good,” said Switch. “Those things are just so creepy and disgusting. They’re much better off dead.”
I nodded. I noticed we didn’t level up from this encounter, but I was a lot closer to my next Level than I had been before the fight. Another fight or two like that and I would hit Level 11, at which point I would get a new Ability. What that Ability was, I didn’t know, but I was looking forward to getting it.
That was when I heard a groan and looked over my shoulder. The man who we had saved was now lying flat on his stomach on the floor. He wasn’t dead—I could see that he was still breathing—but he looked close to it. I tried to Scan him, but when I did, an error message came up:
ERROR. CHARACTER CANNOT BE SCANNED.
That was weird. I didn’t even know there was a limit to the kind of characters I could Scan. That made me hesitant to approach him because I had no idea if he was a friend or foe.
Still, even if he was an enemy, he certainly wasn’t in any position to hurt us, so I walked over to the man and flipped him over onto his back. This allowed me to see that he was an older man, perhaps middle-aged, wearing long, flowing red robes that reminded me of Switch’s, which made me think he had to be a Mage, though his were nicer than hers. His shaved face was covered with scratches and dirt and his eyes were closed, while his breathing came out in ragged gasps between his thick lips. He was surprisingly muscular under his robes, but I also noticed that his chest was cut up and bleeding, which must have been where the Cave Bats had done most of their damage.
“Oh my gosh,” said Bait as he and Switch appeared above me. “He looks awful. Do you think he will be okay?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I held out a hand. “Someone give me a Health Potion. If we can raise his HP back to full, he might wake up and talk.”
Switch handed me a Health Potion from within her robes and I popped open the lid and pressed it against the old man’s lips. The old man drunk the Health Potion slowly at first, but as his Health returned, he drunk it faster and faster until the entire bottle was emptied, at which point I tossed the bottle away. The wounds on his face and chest quickly closed, until soon he looked like he was merely sleeping rather than injured.
Then the man suddenly coughed and spluttered. His eyelids slammed open, revealing bright green eyes that stared in bewilderment up at the ceiling.
“What …” said the man in between coughs. “What happened? The Bats, are they—”
“They’re gone,” I confirmed. I gestured at the burning remains of the last Cave Bat not too far away. “We killed all of them and fed you a Health Potion, so you should be okay now unless you have some kind of status condition we don’t know about.”
The man’s eyes darted over to the burning corpse of the final Cave Bat as if he could not believe what he was seeing. “I see.”
There was something strangely familiar about the man’s voice. I felt like I had heard it somewhere else before, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of where.
“So, uh, what’s your name?” said Bait, clearly trying to calm the man down with friendly chitchat. “And exactly how did you end up in this situation, anyway?”
The man’s eyes darted back to us. He looked at Bait for a moment and then at Switch and finally at me. His eyes widened with clear recognition as if he knew who I was, even though I had never seen him before myself.
“What are you three doing here?” said the man in astonishment. “How did you even get in here in the first place?”
“What do you mean?” I said. “Are you referring to the tunnel? This was the first cave mouth we found and—”
“Not the tunnel,” said the man, shaking his head. He spread his arms. “This … this world, the Vaultwork, Vaultwork Online, Keoria, whatever you want to call it. No one else is supposed to know this place even exists.”
“Are you a player, too?” I said in shock. “What’s your name? Where are you from?”
The man sat up. He rubbed his forehead, staring directly at me with an expression of curiosity and dread in his eyes.
“Do you mean to say that you don’t recognize me, Bolt?” said the man, tilting his head in confusion. “Is my voice that different from how it is in the real world?”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “Well, your voice does sound familiar to me, but I can’t remember where I last heard it.”
“I see,” said the man. His voice became cooler and monotone, almost robotic. “Then perhaps I should just come out and tell you who I am. No point in lying or playing games at this point.”
The man put a hand on his chest. “I am Mecha Knight … and I am here to stop Holly before she destroys us all.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stared at the man in disbelief. I half-expected him to come out and say it was just a joke, but his face was too serious for me to conclude that this was anything other than a serious statement of fact.
Mecha Knight was a member of the Neohero Alliance Leadership Council, as well as a founding member of that same organization. Additionally, he was the supervisor of the Young Neos and had acted as a mentor of sorts to me for quite a while before I graduated. He was one of the first superheroes, with the ability to talk to and control machines, which was helped by the fact that he was a machine, albeit a machine with a human soul.
I had also recently learned that he, Dad, and someone known only as Benefactor were collaborators in an experiment called ‘Project Revival,’ which was a project designed to perfect the cloning process. Yet Mecha Knight had never even mentioned that to me before, which was part of the reason I had grown to trust him less than I normally did over the last month or so.
That didn’t explain what Mecha Knight was doing here, in Vaultwork Online of all places. As far as I knew, Bait, Switch, and I were the only three players in the game. How could Mecha Knight have even gotten access to it? It didn’t make sense, so I was still a bit skeptical that this guy was really him.
As if reading my mind, Mecha Knight said, “I am aware of how ludicrous my claim must sound to you, but I can assure you that it is the truth. I am indeed Mecha Knight, playing this game just like you three. I can prove it if I must.”
“How did you get here?” asked Bait. “We didn’t se
e you in Vault F.”
“Yeah,” said Switch, nodding. I noticed she kept her distance from Mecha Knight, perhaps because she didn’t trust him, though I wasn’t sure why. “There were only three VR headsets and you didn’t use any of them.”
Mecha Knight scratched the back of his head and stood up. He was slightly taller than the rest of us, though not by much. “The VR headsets in Vault F are not the only way to enter the Vaultwork. There are other methods available to those who know about them, though they’ve been abandoned for years. I was surprised when I found out that I could still access the Vaultwork. Surprised, but pleased.”
“Still access the Vaultwork?” Bait repeated. “Do you mean to say that you’ve been here before?”
“Yes,” said Mecha Knight. He looked over at me, his eyes seeming to peer into my soul. “But you knew that already, didn’t you, Bolt?”
I slowly nodded. “Well, I know about your involvement in Project Revival, involvement that you apparently never saw fit to mention to me.”
“What’s Project Revival?” asked Switch, looking from Mecha Knight to me and back curiously. “It sounds like a secret I definitely need to know.”
“That’s because, Switch, it is meant to be a secret,” said Mecha Knight. He folded his arms in front of his chest. “A secret lost to history, just like the Vaults. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that it was found. In my experience, long forgotten secrets rarely stay forgotten or secret for very long.”
Bait and Switch nodded in agreement to that. I suspected that Mecha Knight was referring to something they knew about, but for the life of me I couldn’t guess what. It was something I’d have to ask them about later on when I had the time.
“Maybe there’s a reason secrets don’t stay secret, Mecha Knight,” I said. “In my experience, the only people who keep secrets are people who have something to hide.”
Mecha Knight regarded me with cold eyes. “Or people who are trying to protect something important.”