Unconsciously, he reached for the ear that the assassin had cut off and was happy to feel it. Thank the developers that you got a brand new body every time you respawned. His new body was naked except for his loincloth and his soulbound saber. He heard a gasp next to him and turned to see Mika’s mostly naked body as she too respawned. He’d rarely seen her without armor and he found himself staring at her flawless body.
Looking over at him, she caught him staring at her. She blushed but made no attempt to cover herself. Not that she needed to. Like him, she was wearing a loincloth but she was also wearing the equivalent of a bra or bikini top.
He might have stared long but a new message popped up and he groaned.
You have died recently.
Your experience gain has been decreased by 10% for 10 hours.
Your skills have been decreased by 10% for 10 hours.
Your maximum health has been decreased by 10% for 10 hours.
Your maximum mana has been decreased by 10% for 10 hours.
“What is it?” Mika asked as she saw his pained expression.
“Death penalty,” he answered, getting to his feet. He reached down and helped her feet. “Once I reached level 10, I became subject to the death penalty.”
“I hate that,” she said and Jace remembered that she’d played a cat-kin before she had died and had been around level 50. No doubt she was familiar with the “pleasure” of the death penalty..
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s loot our bodies and find someplace safe.”
Chapter 3
Jace and Mika raced through the town naked except for their loincloths and her bra. As they ran, Jace realized that with his death, Luna would have been dismissed and he’d need to re-summon her. Unfortunately, it also meant they had no way of communicating to Diana what had happened.
“How did the assassin find you?” Mika said as they turned to run down an alley.
“Unlike players,” Jace frowned. “NPCs instantly know about name changes.”
“What?” Mika gave him a confused look..
Jace sigh. “In the game, our characters have a unique identifier that links back to our character record. Players NEVER see it and even developers rarely, if ever, bother with it. It’s just a long hexadecimal number. Instead, developers and support people will look up a player by name. After all, that’s what players know - their character name - so all the lookup tools look it up based on the character name. With me so far?”
Mika furrowed her brow but nodded, “I think so.”
“But NPCs remember their interactions with players via that unique identifier. So even if you change your name, they internally look you up by that unique identifier and then pull the name from the record,” Jace explained. “That’s why all the NPCs addressed us by our new names when we changed our name during the marriage ceremony. None of them even noticed the change or commented on it.”
Mika nodded. “Ok, that sort of makes sense. So NPCs can find us even if we change our names?”
“Yes,” Jace admitted. “Unfortunately. And Damian knows this. I suspect he sent the assassin after us right before we did the second name change. The assassin’s guild took the contract and they’re searching for me based on that unique id.”
“So he can’t find you anymore?” Mika asked hopefully.
“Not exactly,” Jace replied. “Did you see the assassin cut off my ear?”
Mika made a face. “Yes, that was disgusting.” He saw her glance at his restored ear and smile. “At least you got it back when you respawned.”
“Yes, well, the assassin will deliver that ear back to Damian as proof the assassination had been carried out. When he gets it, it will say ‘Ear of Jynx Knightly’. So he’ll have my name.”
“But you can change it again, right?” Mika asked worriedly.
“I can. The problem is, it costs me 50,000 gold each time. That’s a big deal for us right now. But as soon as I do it, Damian can just hire another assassin. Because I’m so low level, it won’t cost him much and even if it did, he has more than enough money to keep sending assassins after me.”
“So then what do you do?”
“I’ll have to wait. We’re leaving in a few hours and then we’ll be out at sea. We’ll be much harder to track since there won’t be assassins to find us. When we get to the next port, I can change my name,” Jace replied.
He purposefully didn’t mention the fact that Damian was a high level warlock who had access to the teleportation spell. With it, he could travel to any city he’d been to before. That meant, he was much more mobile than they were.
But the teleportation spell was also a limitation that they could exploit. Since Damian could only travel to cities he’d been to, he might be limited to the major cities. It also meant he couldn’t just teleport to them once they were out on the ocean. But they couldn’t stay on the ocean forever. And when they finally reached a port, would Damian be waiting for them?
Jace and Mika reached the raven messenger shop to loot their bodies but had a surprise waiting for them. Surrounding the shop were a group of people. In the real world, it might not be surprising to see a crowd of people around a double murder scene. But this wasn’t the real world.
Normally, NPCs didn’t really react to player deaths, just like they didn’t react to players running around in loincloths after they had died. It was something that was programmed in. There were exceptions, but generally the NPCs ignored them. So why were they gathered around the shop?
Pressing their way through the small crowd, he saw why. Not only were Jace and Mika’s body lying in the doorway, but just beyond them, still in the shop, was the body of the little gnome who had helped them.
The assassin had killed all three of them. That was odd. Very odd. Normally an assassination only targeted one person. Instead, this one had killed all three of them. But why? Had the assassin simply been covering his tracks.
“Jace!” Mika said, grabbing his arm. “Look!”
She was pointing to her body and Jace instantly saw what she was referring to. After they had respawned, the assassin must have cut her ear off as well. He strained his eyes to look into the room and saw that the gnome was missing an ear too.
“Geez,” he breathed. “All three of us had our ears cut off.”
“But why?” Mika asked. She moved in close to her body and a moment later, her old body disappeared.
His mind whirling with possibilities, Jace bent down next to his body and looted all of his items. As soon as he removed the last item, his body dissolved away without so much as a stray glance from the NPCs. Apparently, they were all here because of the gnome’s death.
Jace motioned for Mika to step back from the crowd and once they were clear he frowned. “This isn’t good.”
“What does this mean?” she asked, clearly rattled by the assassinations.
As he tried to think of a response, Jace considered donning his Infiltrator’s Hat and his Mountebank’s Cloak. The hat allowed him to change his shape into a similarly sized humanoid shape, while the cloak allowed him to remain hidden in most situations. But the hat wouldn’t disguise his name, so it wouldn’t prevent an assassin from finding him. And unless he wanted to stay hidden the entire time he was off the ship, the cloak wouldn’t be of much use either.
Jace had years of experience playing VEIL Online. Yet despite this, he’d never been in a situation when he was being hunted by another player. Were there items that would obscure his name? There wasn’t a player auction area in Lasthaven, but he could always look in Nynymmost when they arrived.
He looked back at Mika who was still waiting for an answer. “I’m not sure exactly what it means, but I think Damian might be even more devious than I gave him credit for. Not only did he assassinate me, but I think he must have given them instructions to kill everyone with me.
“Why?”
“Well,” he started. “If he talked to anyone at the ball, he knows I came there with two women. He probably knows
you’re my wives at this point. But he may not have your names. He probably had the assassin kill everyone around me so he’d get the ears of all of my companions. Then, he’d know your names.”
Mika furrowed her eyebrows. “Does this mean he can track both of us?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Jace frowned and nodded. “Once those ears get back to him, he’ll know both of our names.”
“Now what?” Mika asked.
“I think we should go back to the ship and wait for Diana,” Jace told her. He saw her disappointed look. “But you can probably look around some more if you want. I was the assassin’s target, not you. He won’t know about you until he gets your ear.”
She considered that and then a big grin spread across her face. “I will bring you waffles!”
Jace chuckled despite the grim circumstances. “Waffles actually sound excellent right now.”
“Okay,” she said. “You go back to the ship and I will get waffles.”
“See if you can find the servants, especially Fimipp,” now that we know Whitecliff still stands and probably will keep standing, ask them to return. Give them enough money for all of them to catch a ship out of here and back to the manor. They’re just NPCs, so Damian won’t bother with them.”
“Are you sure?” Mika asked.
“They don’t really know anything,” he said. “And they’re probably in more danger with me.”
Mika considered his words, probably thinking about the assassin attack. They’d both respawned, but the gnome hadn’t. Had any of their servants been with them, they’d be permanently dead. “Okay. I’ll find them and tell them. And get waffles!”
He smiled and she moved forward then and kissed him, quickly but softly, before turning and disappearing into the crowd. He could do nothing but stare after her as the mass of NPCs swallowed her up.
He looked down, expecting to see Luna but remembered he needed to summon her. Alone, he walked back to the docks and found the Sea Tyrant. He could see that there were only a few people on deck and guessed most of them, crew included, had disembarked. That was fine. He needed some time to think, anyway.
Jace went below deck to his cabin. Once inside, he closed the door and braced himself for summoning his familiar. He was stuck at full sensory input, with no way to dampen the sensations from the game. From everything he had read, it meant he and the girls were experiencing everything at 110 or 120% of normal.
While heightened senses might be great when eating waffles or indulging in virtual sex, it wasn’t very welcome when experiencing pain. And tremendous pain was what he felt every time he summoned Luna.
The pain of summoning a familiar was so bad that Diana had refused to summon her own. She’d tried it once and had instantly given up. He didn’t blame her. It felt like his very soul was being sucked out. And yet, if he didn’t go through the pain, he couldn’t summon Luna. And the little cat had been his companion since he first became human in the game.
Sitting down and steeling himself for the process, Jace summoned his familiar. He recognized the ripping feeling as it felt like his insides were being pulled out. Jace saw the blue and red glowing orbs that came from him and then merged to form his cat familiar.
In a few moments, it was over and it left him sweating and breathing heavy. He looked down at the cat who had appeared and she looked back at him. “Summoner die?”
“Yes,” he told her. “Summoner die. Assassins.”
“Bad assassins,” she hissed.
He chuckled as he got his breath under control. “Yes, bad assassins.” Jace remembered Diana’s promise to get the cat something other than fish. “Did Diana buy you some food?”
“Yes,” Luna meowed. “Good chicken.”
“Glad you liked it,” he told the cat. “Once we leave, it will be back to fish.”
His cat gave him a dejected look and then began licking her paws. Recognizing her actions as a dismissal, he sat back in the chair and looked around the cabin for something to do. Unfortunately, there was nothing. Other than the bunk, the chair and a small nightstand, there was nothing else in the room.
Jace began looking through his inventory for something he could do or work on and saw the logbooks he’d taken from Captain Drakkar. He’d taken them when he’d slipped aboard the Wyvern’s Tail and retrieved the princess’ crown as part of a thieves guild quest. He’d caused a fiery explosion when he’d left but he knew it hadn’t killed the pirate.
He snickered. He first met and defeated Dainard Drakkar when he was the guildmaster of Crossroads. They had dueled and Jace had nearly killed him when the guildmaster had used his Vanish ability and Backstabbed Charlena, killing her. The scoundrel had then fled and Jace thought he had seen the last of him.
But that wasn’t the case. Somehow, the former guildmaster had become the captain of a pirate ship that had been involved in the theft of the princess’ tiara. Once again, Jace had faced him and lived to tell the tale. Hopefully, that was the last he’d seen of the man.
Eying the logbooks, Jace wondered if they would shed some light on how the former guildmaster had come to be the captain of a pirate ship. If nothing else, at least it was something to do while he waited for Mika to return with waffles.
Chapter 4
“Waffles!” Mika announced as she threw open the door. The Japanese girl was grinning broadly and carrying a parchment wrapped bundle in one hand and a small bottle in the other.
Jace, who had been reading the logs, was startled by her sudden appearance and the logbook he’d been reading went sailing to the other side of the room. Unconsciously, he began to scramble for his weapons before he realized who it was.
Luna had been lying on his bunk napping, but the sudden noise and motion had caused her to screech and spring straight up into the air. The moment the cat’s feet hit the bunk, they windmilled for several seconds before she launched herself against the far wall, bounced off, hit the floor and then darted underneath the bunk.
Recognizing the figure as Mika, Jace slumped back and tried to slow his rapidly beating heart. “You scared the bejesus out of me!”
Having witnessed the sudden flurry of movement from Jace and the bouncing cat, Mika’s grin slipped a bit and she looked chagrined. She gave him an apologetic shrug. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jace muttered. “If I actually aged in the game, I think you would have just scared 10 years off my life.”
“But I brought waffles,” she offered, holding up the wrapped package. “And syrup!” She held up the small bottle.
Jace smiled despite himself and motioned her to sit on the bunk. She did so and handed him the waffles and syrup. He caught a whiff of the food and with his enhanced sense of smell, he suddenly found himself feeling famished.
He ripped through the parchment surrounding the waffles to reveal still thick, warm waffles that were still steaming. Mika chuckled and handed him the syrup, which he poured over the waffles.
“Sorry,” she told him. “No utensils. They were not willing to give away their silverware.”
Jace shrugged. Reaching down, he picked up a sticky waffle and bit into it. After days of salted fish, he moaned in pleasure at the delicious, syrupy waffles. “Oh, this is so good.”
Mika giggled at him and gave him a cheshire cat grin. “I ate two orders!”
Jace took another bite and barely chewed before swallowing it. “I don’t blame you. These are really good.”
“And I found the halfling and the other servants at a tavern,” Mika said. “I told them about Whitecliff and they will take the next boat back. They’re getting their luggage now.”
“Excellent,” Jace said. “Thank you. I really think they are safer away from me.”
Mika bent down and picked up the logbook he’d been reading when she had surprised him. “What’s this?”
“It’s one of the logbooks I took from Captain Drakkar when I stole the tiara,” he replied between bites.
“logbook?” she looked at him questioning
ly. She thumbed through the book and furrowed her brow. As she did, he took another bite of waffles and enjoyed the warm sweetness. Mika looked up at him. “Can you read this? Is it in a special language?”
Jace took the book from her and smiled. “It’s coded. At least, the first part of it is.”
“A code?” she raised an eyebrow. “And you figured out the code?”
Grinning broadly, he nodded and took another bite of the waffles. “One of my college courses was on cryptography. It was mostly on computer cryptography, but the first part of the course was a history on codes. Plus, I’ve played the game for years so I’m familiar with some of the ciphers they use.”
“So, you figured it out?” she asked excitedly. “You know what it says? Does it have secret information?”
Jace nodded knowingly. “As it turns out, the logs are written by two people, as I said before. The most recent is Drakkar and his entries aren’t encoded. But the previous entries are from a Captain Burchard Southey. I’ve never heard of him, but from the logs I read he was quite the pirate.”
Luna came out from under the bed at that moment. She looked around the room and, seeing nothing scary anymore, hopped up on the bed and began rubbing herself against Mika. She picked up the cat and set it in her lap before starting to pet it. In only a few moments, his familiar was purring loudly.
“Anyway, Captain Burchard used a Caesar shift cipher...” he said.
“Caesar shift cipher?” Mika interrupted, looking perplexed.
“It’s one of the simplest ciphers there are,” he explained. “Basically, you shift the alphabet by a certain number of characters. Say your number is four. That means whatever the letter is, you count backwards that many characters. When you decode it, E becomes A and R becomes N. Encoded, Mika would be Qmoe.”
“That is pretty neat. How did you figure out the number to shift the letters by?”
Jace took another bite of the waffles before answering. “I almost didn’t. I thought he either memorized the number or maybe there was something in his room or on his person that would remind him of the cipher.”
Veil Online - Book 3: An Epic LitRPG Adventure Page 3