by Lucas Flint
“They took me by surprise,” said Mecha Knight. “Plus, my Defense is my weakest stat due to my being a Mage. I put most of my Stat Points into my Mana and Speed stats, so it’s possible for lower-leveled characters to do a lot of damage to me if they get a sneak attack.”
“So the Cave Bats took you by surprise?” I said.
“Yes,” said Mecha Knight, “but now that I am aware that they exist, I won’t be taken by surprise again.”
“I see,” I said. “Well, let’s loot the Bats and get moving. We have a quest to complete and the only way to do that is to keep moving forward.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Unfortunately, the Cave Bats didn’t have much in the way of loot on their bodies. We managed to find a few coins and a few copies of an item called the ‘Cave Bat Fang,’ which seemed to be some kind of material meant to be brewed in a potion. No equipment or weapons for any of us, which was kind of disappointing, because I was hoping we’d find some new equipment that could help beef up my Defense. Oh, well.
After that, we resumed our journey down the tunnels, but we didn’t need a torch to light the way this time. Instead, Mecha Knight cast a Light spell on the tip of his staff, which illuminated the entire tunnel ahead of us by several feet. This meant that we wouldn’t have to worry about being taken by surprise again, which was fine by me, because I still remembered how dangerous those Cave Bats had been and was worried that we might not survive against another ambush like that.
Just because we weren’t ambushed didn’t mean that the journey was easy, though. Cave monsters still randomly attacked us, jumping out of side tunnels or just straight up charging at us down the main tunnel. We killed more Cave Bats, but also dealt with Shadow Moles (annoying creatures that could briefly turn into shadows to avoid damage), Rock Rats (doberman-sized rats with rock hard hides), and Slime Snakes (large snakes that constantly oozed a slime that made it hard to land a solid blow on them).
As a result of all this fighting, Bait, Switch, and I leveled up a few times in the course of about an hour. Mecha Knight did not, despite helping us, because he was high-leveled enough that killing these lower-leveled minions gave him very few EXP. But that was okay because Mecha Knight’s high level meant he could kill these monsters with one hit most of the time, which meant the fights didn’t drag out.
Along the way, I explained to Mecha Knight our quest about finding the eggs of the Birdman Tribe. He agreed that Holly was likely connected somehow, but like us, he didn’t know why Holly would have her minions steal the eggs of the Birdman Tribe. In any case, he agreed to help us complete the quest, though he stressed the importance of not allowing ourselves to get sidetracked by these quests, because the more time we took to get to the Tower of the Cursed, the more time Holly had to figure out how to get to the Internet.
I couldn’t disagree with that, but I still felt like we needed to complete this quest. I had a feeling that it was a lot more important than it might look at first glance. It might even help us figure out how to defeat Holly, which was something we definitely needed to think about.
That was another thing I discussed with Mecha Knight. I hoped he had a plan to kill Holly because I didn’t. He told me that Holly could probably be defeated by in-game methods like any other VO boss, but that it might be difficult with how low-leveled we were and how powerful Holly was. But he told me not to worry about that for now, because he was already thinking of a plan to defeat Holy and that he would share it with the rest of us once we reached the Tower.
I wished that Mecha Knight would tell us what his plan was upfront, but I suppose we really didn’t need to know it right away. We were a little busy at the moment trying not to get killed by the seemingly endless hordes of random cave monsters that attacked us at regular intervals, anyway. There would be plenty of time to go over the plan later.
“Are we there yet?” said Switch all of a sudden, breaking my thoughts. She walked beside me, a frown on her face as she clutched her Mage’s Staff close to her chest.
“Where yet?” I said, looking at her in confusion.
“To where the eggs are being kept,” said Switch. “Duh.”
Frowning, I pulled up my map. When we first entered the Tall Mountains, my map of the cave network had been entirely blank. Just in the last hour, however, we had managed to explore a good chunk of it, though there was still a lot of it we hadn’t even visited yet. “I don’t know. It’s not like it’s on our map.”
Switch groaned. “Meaning we might be down here for several more hours, at least? Olga, do you know where the eggs are?”
“Unfortunately, Switch, I do not,” said Olga. She floated above us, her wings working hard to keep her afloat and propel her forward at the same time. “Despite being an AI, my character is just as limited as yours in this game.”
“They gotta be down here somewhere, right?” said Bait, glancing down a side tunnel we passed. “Aeolus said the Birdmen think that the eggs are being brought down here.”
“Couldn’t he have been wrong, though?” said Switch with a shudder. “It isn’t like he went down here and found out for himself, after all. If he did, he wouldn’t have had to dump this job on us.”
“Patience, Switch,” said Mecha Knight in his usual calm voice. “Part of the appeal of these quests is that you must work to complete them. VO is different from other MMORPGs in many ways, but in one way it is similar: Making players work to complete their quests.”
“Maybe you’re right, but I feel like we should have found them by now,” said Switch. “I mean, it feels like we’ve explored most of the tunnels already, but we still don’t know where the eggs are. If they were down here, wouldn’t we have found them already?”
“I’m sure we’ll find them eventually,” I said as we turned a corner. “Sooner or later we’ll find the eggs, and once we do, we’ll save them from whoever has been stealing—”
Something dashed out of one of the side tunnels to my right. I turned just in time to see a humanoid lizard creature before it slammed into me hard enough to knock both of us down. I fell on my bottom, my head spinning from the impact, while the lizard creature fell flat on its back and dropped something that rolled away from it.
“Ow,” I said, rubbing my head and looking at the creature. “What was—”
I stopped speaking when I saw the creature which had run into me. It was a vaguely humanoid creature with lizard-like features and skin. It wore partially rusted metal armor, which left its arms and legs exposed save for metal bracelets on his wrists and ankles. The creature had red hair sticking out of its head, while crooked yellow teeth could be seen within its mouth. Standing up, it was probably just an inch or two shorter than me.
But then I noticed the object which it had dropped. It was a fairly large egg, about the size of a toddler, the shell a greenish-black color. Despite having been dropped onto the hard stone floor, it looked unharmed, so I Scanned the egg to find out what it was:
Name: Birdman Egg
Level: 0
Class: Egg
Affinity: N/A
Health: 1/1
Weakness: Everything
An egg laid by a Birdwoman. It may not look like much now, but once it hatches, the chick within has the potential to become a great and powerful Birdman warrior someday. Handle with care.
Before I could process what this meant, I heard the lizard creature groan and it sat up, clutching its head with both hands.
“Ouchie,” said the lizard creature, massaging its temples. “Okac need watch where Okac is going, yes Okac should. Hurt Okac’s head, yes Okac did.”
Curious, I Scanned the creature and this was what I found:
Name: Okac, Lizard Warrior
Level: 13
Class: Lizard Warrior
Affinity: Evil
Health: 40/40
Weakness: Ice, Electricity
Lizard Warriors are well-known throughout Keoria for their utter brutality and lack of mercy toward their enemies, althou
gh they are not very intelligent. Normally found in the Burning Swamps in the south, bands of Lizard Warriors have been known to travel as far north as Ketten during times of famine. It is advised that you avoid picking fights with individual Lizard Warriors, for where there is one Lizard Warrior, there are often many more nearby.
Again, before I could respond, the Lizard Warrior, apparently named Okac, suddenly looked around and said, “Birdman Egg! Where is Birdman Egg? Hope I did not lose it. Master will be very angry if I lose egg. Might even kill me.”
Okac’s eyes suddenly fell on the Birdman Egg lying a few feet away from him. “Egg!”
Okac reached out to grab it, but then Mecha Knight waved his staff and the egg rolled away out of his reach, seemingly on its own, though I knew that Mecha Knight had moved it using his Telekinesis spell.
“What?” said Okac. “Get back here, egg! Don’t run from Okac, or Okac will die!”
That was when Okac finally noticed us. He looked over at us with a surprised expression on his face. I wasn’t sure what had taken him so long to notice five people staring at him. Then again, the description of his class did say that Lizard Warriors weren’t exactly known for their intelligence, although I didn’t realize they were that stupid.
“Who you?” said Okac. He rose to his feet, but he didn’t run away. “You not Birdmen or Lizard Warriors.”
“We’re outworlders,” said Mecha Knight, “searching for more Birdmen Eggs like that one. You wouldn’t happen to know where the rest of them are, would you?”
Okac’s eyes narrowed. “Why you want to know that? Okac doesn’t recognize you. Why should I tell you?”
“Because if you don’t—” Switch began in a threatening tone.
“Because we’re from your Master,” I said, interrupting Switch, who looked at me with a mixture of annoyance and confusion on her face.
Okac visibly relaxed, but I could tell he still didn’t trust us entirely. “Master sent you?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. I hoped that Okac wasn’t smart enough to see that I was lying through my teeth. “She, uh, sent us to check on the progress of your kidnapping of the Birdman Tribe’s eggs. We’re supposed to report back to her on the progress of the mission.”
Okac frowned. “Master did not mention sending people to check up on us.”
“That’s because you’re pretty low on the totem pole, my friend,” I said quickly. “Master does a lot of things without telling you. I thought you would be used to that by now.”
“True,” said Okac, nodding again, although there was still some skepticism in his eyes. “Master’s ways are indeed strange and mysterious to Okac, but it is not Okac’s place to question them. Show you to the rest of the eggs, yes Okac can.”
“Great,” I said. “We’ve been wandering these tunnels forever, so we’re lucky we found you. It’s easy to get lost down here if you don’t know where you’re going.”
“Easy, yes,” said Okac with another nod. “But not if you know trick like Okac do.”
Okac walked over to the Birdman Egg and picked it up very gently. He looked over the egg once, probably to make sure it wasn’t cracked, and then looked over at us and said, “What you waiting for? We go. Ceremony is about to start and we can’t be late for it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was a risky move, pretending to be fellow servants of Okac’s ‘Master’ (who I suspected was Holly), but it seemed to be paying off because Okac soon showed us the way to the Birdmen Eggs. He took us down a side tunnel that we didn’t even notice, partly because the entrance was hidden behind a fake wall that was indistinguishable from every other wall down here. Okac explained that there were a lot of hidden side tunnels beneath the Tall Mountains, which led to all sorts of hidden rooms and locations, but he said that he and his friends only used a few of them. I overheard Bait muttering something about how it might be worth going back through the hidden side tunnels at some point in order to see if they had any secret loot or treasure. Personally, I didn’t think we should, because we weren’t playing this game for fun, but to defeat Holly.
As we walked down a side tunnel that soon turned into a staircase heading down beneath the earth, I walked up beside Okac—who still carried one of the Birdman Eggs in his arms—and said, “So, Okac, I come from a different part of Keoria where I was doing other things our Master needed done. She already gave me a brief rundown on this operation, but there are a few details I’m not entirely sure about.”
“Sure,” said Okac, though without looking at me. Part of me wished I wasn’t walking so close to him because he stank. “What need help with?”
“For example, how long have we been stealing Birdman Eggs?”
Okac scrunched his eyes like he had to give that question a lot of thought. “A few weeks. Not much longer than that.”
“And you’ve been stealing them directly from the nests of Birdwoman?”
“Yes.”
“Without them noticing?” I found that hard to believe because Okac did not strike me as a particularly stealthy creature.
“Easy to do at night,” said Okac. “Or when they away from nest. Hidden tunnels in Mountains mean there are lots of places to hide if Birdmen notice you and try to chase you.”
“But it’s not night time now,” I said, glancing at the egg in his arms. “So where did you get this one?”
“Got lucky,” said Okac. “Commander Kerco said we needed one more egg. So Okac go and look for it and find egg in nest close to one of the secret entrances about an hour ago. Not usually that easy.”
Commander Kerco must have been the Lizard Warrior in charge of this operation, which meant he was most likely going to be some kind of boss character. I hoped he was as dumb as Okac and wouldn’t realize we were not actually fellow servants of Holly sent to help the Lizard Warriors.
“Do you know why the Master ordered you guys to steal the Birdman Eggs in the first place?” I said casually. “Just trying to make sure we’re all on the same page here.”
Okac shrugged. “Okac don’t know. All Okac knows is that eggs are needed for a ceremony. Okac thinks it’s a waste because Birdman Eggs make delicious omelets. Commander Kerco killed last Lizard Warrior who tried to eat them, though, so Okac has left them alone.”
I nodded in understanding, but inside, I was frustrated by Okac’s apparent ignorance about what the Birdman Eggs were being stolen for. A ceremony was vague enough to mean anything, which didn’t help me understand what it was going to be about. Perhaps we would see what it was about once we got to wherever we were going.
“So where, exactly, are we going?” I said.
Okac suddenly looked at me with a smile. “We are already here.”
Just as Okac said that we rounded a corner and found ourselves standing in the entrance to an absolutely massive cavern. My jaw fell open when I saw where we had entered.
Unlike the rest of the tunnels and caverns underneath the Tall Mountains, this cave was huge. The domed ceiling was dotted with glowing crystals like stars, which provided enough light by which to see, while holes in the walls appeared to be the sleeping quarters of the Lizard Warriors because I could see some Lizard Warriors napping on piles of straw, while others were just waking up. A small waterfall poured out of a wall to the right, the water falling into a pool which turned into a small creek that wound around the perimeter of the cave like a line in the sand.
The cave smelled horrible. With all of these Lizard Warriors crammed into one space, I found the stink almost unbearable. It smelled somewhere between swamp water and rotting flesh. That second smell seemed to come from the animal bones scattered across the cavern, most likely the leftovers from the Lizard Warriors’ meals.
But my eyes were drawn to the pen in the center of the room. It reminded me of this petting zoo I went to when I was eight, a simple wooden enclosure with dirt and hay in the middle. Instead of cute farm animals to pet, however, there were dozens and dozens of Birdman Eggs, each one resembling the one i
n Okac’s arms. Two Lizard Warriors—who Scan showed me were Level 15 each—stood guard in front of the gate to the egg pen, wielding simple but deadly-looking swords and spears in their hands.
And sitting on a nest next to the enclosure was a Lizard Warrior that looked different from all of the others. It was bigger, for one thing, with larger muscles and longer legs and a tail covered with metal. It wore a helmet made of some kind of bone, while a wicked sharp sword was strapped to its back. It was currently ripping the meat off of what looked like the leg of a full-sized grizzly bear, though it was hard to tell due to how much meat the Lizard Warrior had already eaten.
Before any of us could react, Okac rushed across the cavern toward the big Lizard Warrior, managing to make his way across the bone-covered floor with surprising nimbleness and speed.
“Commander Kerco!” Okac shouted as he ran toward the big Lizard Warrior. “Commander Kerco, Okac has the last egg!”
That big Lizard Warrior was Commander Kerco? He looked like trouble. Kerco stopped ripping his meat apart and looked, with slight annoyance, as Okac came to a stop before him and held out the egg to him proudly.
“See?” said Okac. “Birdman Egg. The gods blessed me.”
Kerco dropped his half-eaten bear leg on the floor and stood up to his full height. I had completely underestimated his height. He wasn’t just bigger than the other Lizard Warriors, but taller, too. He was a head taller than every other Lizard Warrior in the room and towered over Okac like he was a midget, his red eyes locked onto the Birdman Egg held out before him like a gift.
“The gods indeed have blessed you, Okac,” said Commander Kerco in a deep, booming voice. “To find the final egg we need to complete the ceremony so quickly is a most fortuitous turn of events indeed.”
I exchanged a puzzled look with Bait and Switch. After hearing Okac’s simple speech patterns, I just assumed that all Lizard Warriors spoke that way. Yet Kerco spoke in a fairly complicated, even sophisticated, manner. Maybe that was why he was the Commander and the others weren’t, though I’m sure him being literally bigger than everyone else in the room played a role in that as well.