“Luna can hear them,” Mika said, walking over to the cat and rubbing behind her large ears. His familiar purred contentedly.
“I don’t feel good about going in there,” Diana frowned. “This is the part in the movie or book where the hapless people wander into the fog and get killed.”
Looking into the fog, Jace couldn’t help but agree. He didn’t like the idea of trying to navigate through it. He doubted they’d even be able to make out the peaks of the volcanoes through the thick mist.
“I think it might be better if we go around,” Diana said, gesturing to the island.
“I’m not sure we can,” Jace replied. “The volcanoes are in the middle of the island and the treasure is between them.”
“How do you know for certain?” Mika asked.
Jace smiled. “Each of the coordinates had notes too. But I wasn’t about to tell the crew. They would have been searching for days or weeks, if they found it at all. It’s not like there’s a GPS in this game.”
“And when were you going to tell us?” Diana glared at him.
“Well,” Jace said sheepishly. “I was going to wait and try to look like the hero, but I guess I’ve let my secret slip.”
“Hmm,” Diana clicked her tongue. “Keeping secrets from your wives. That’s no way to be a good husband.”
“So, it’s a good thing we didn’t throw the real logs overboard,” Mika said thoughtfully.
“Exactly,” Jace agreed. “But I wasn’t sure whether or not Drakkar had figured out the code, so I wanted him to think the only way he could get the map was to fight. And I paid the good captain well for her logs books.”
“Just so you could throw them over,” Mika observed.
“I had to sell my performance,” he said in his best diva voice. “I am an… artist.”
Mika giggled but Diana just rolled her eyes and motioned to the mist. “Are we seriously going in there? We’ll get lost for sure.”
“No!” Mika said and produced an object from her inventory and held it out for them to see. It was a crude, but working compass.
“A compass?!” Jace exclaimed happily. He had been planning on relying on Luna’s sense of direction but he hadn’t been completely sure whether or not she could maintain it surrounded by dense fog. “Where did you get that?”
The Japanese girl beamed at him. “I found it in your bedroom. I thought it would come in handy.”
“You were right!” he said as she dropped it into his hand. “With this, we can keep our heading.”
“So we’re really going in there?” Diana was looking into the now impenetrable mist.
“Yeah,” Jace said with a resigned shrug. “We don’t really have a choice. But first, I want to tie us together.”
“So we don’t get lost?” Diana said with a furrowed brow. “I think I’ve seen this in a movie. The rope gets cut and we get separated and then killed one by one.”
Jace looked over at the older woman as he retrieved the rope from his inventory. “Yeah. I recommend we keep one hand on the rope in front and back. If it goes slack, we yell out and stop in place. Then we move towards each other until we’re together.”
“I guess it beats the alternative.” She shrugged. “We could wait, you know.”
“We could,” Jace agreed. “But then we risk getting caught at night. And unless you’ve decided to summon your familiar so you can see in the dark, that means only I would have night vision.”
Diana hugged her arms to her body and shuddered. “I tried that again. I felt like I was dying. I don’t know how you can do that. And do it more than once.”
“You’re right,” he gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s painful. The first few times were rough, but I think I’m used to it now. Well, as used as I can be to feeling like my insides are being ripped out.”
The older woman shuddered again. “Yeah, that’s exactly what it feels like. Like someone is ripping my soul away or something.”
“So let’s just stick to daylight,” Jace changed the subject and held out the rope. He took a few minutes to tie the thin rope around each of their waists.
Once they were tied together, he motioned Luna to come up next to him. The cat seemed to sense their tension and padded over without comment. “Stay next to me and let me know if you smell or hear anything. Especially anything like a giant frog.”
“Froggy?” she asked hopefully. Jace remembered she enjoyed chasing frogs and butterflies back in Whitecliff.
“Not the small ones,” he explained. “Giant ones. The size of orcs.”
Luna seemed to consider his words for a moment before responding. “Yes.”
He glanced back at the two girls tied to him and then down to Luna. “Let’s go.”
The group entered the fog then, with Jace and Luna in the lead. Diana was next in line and Mika took the rear. Once they were actually in the fog, visibility was reduced to a matter of feet. Any hope he’d had to navigate by looking up at the volcanoes was gone. He couldn’t even see the sky.
The initial minute or two was slow going since he could barely see the ground and finding sure footing became an issue. Several times he or one of the girls stumbled and, since they were tied together, almost took them all down. But after several minutes, they seemed to find their grove and the odd procession began to make some progress.
A shrill cry sounded in the distance to their left but there was no way to know what had made the sound or exactly where it was. Then another sound answered, slightly deeper, from the opposite side of them. He prayed they were just large birds or some other harmless animal and kept moving.
Jace checked their direction and then continued to check it every few minutes to make sure they were on course. He also checked in with Luna, who was constantly sniffing the air. She seemed to catch the scent of things from time to time but only paused once to sniff a patch of ground before continuing.
Screeches and other sounds continued to sound around them, keeping their nerves on edge. As they walked on, each was looking around, trying to penetrate the thick mist. But it was no use. Not even Luna’s acute Cat-Vision could see through the swirling fog.
After an hour of walking, Jace called a halt and the three humans huddled around Luna. “How are you two doing?”
“Hot,” Diana said, and he could see that she was sweating. “I’ve done the trick with the clothes a few times when they got sweaty.”
“Me too,” Mika admitted. “It is very humid too.”
“Yes,” the older woman agreed. “I feel like I need a drink.”
“I don’t think you’re sweating,” he told them. “I think it’s the mist or fog. It feels damp and I think we’re just picking up condensation or something on our skin and clothes. Like walking through the mist of a waterfall.”
He thought about Diana’s comment regarding feeling like she needed a drink. They shouldn’t be feeling thirsty since they had eaten rations before they’d left. The game didn’t keep a strict track of a character’s food and water consumption as long as they ate every 6 or 8 hours. After that, they’d get a hunger debuff that would gradually get worse until they ate.
If they were feeling thirsty, it was because of something else. He checked his HUD but found no debuffs. That meant it might be something with the environment. Something the devs added to the island on purpose to make this area more difficult. Like the fog. Was the fog here for no other reason that the developer who made the island thought it would be cool or spooky?
“Keep an eye on your HUDs,” he told them. “Let me know if you see any debuffs or weird messages. Maybe this fog has some other effect. Something the devs built in.”
Both girls nodded their heads.
“How much further?” Diana asked. Of the three of them, she looked the worse for wear.
Jace wished he could see the sun or some point to mark their progress but that was impossible. He had pointed himself at the left most volcano and once they reached the base, he was going to turn west. But he had
no idea when that would be. “Sorry Diana, I don’t know.”
She nodded and he could see her head beading with moisture from the fog that surrounded them. “It won’t be soon enough.”
He gave them another minute or two before getting his bearing and continuing their trek. He guessed they needed at least another two hours to get to the base of the volcano. Yet, without a point of reference he couldn’t be certain.
Walking and checking his compass, Jace nearly didn’t see the edge of the lake in time to avoid it. Luckily, Luna had seen it and nudged him with her head just in time for him to see the water’s edge and avoid stepping into it.
He turned around and saw Diana nearly blunder into him before catching sight of him. The older woman yelped. “Oh geez!”
Behind Diana, he saw Mika emerge from the mist as well and stop just shy of bumping into Diana.
“Are we stopping?” Mika said softly.
“Yes,” Jace nodded and then pointed to the water’s edge. “I think we just hit a lake. We’ll have to go around.”
“Okay,” the two girls said in unison.
Then they all froze as a loud sound pierced the mist. It sounded like the croak of a large frog.
“Froggy,” Luna growled softly, her ears back.
Chapter 12
No one in the group moved, other than to swivel their heads around, trying to find the source of the croaking.
“Is that a kroaker?” whispered a wide-eyed Diana. She looked around nervously, her breathing ragged.
Another croak echoed through the mist, this time somewhere to their right. Then another answered from their left.
“I think they know we’re here,” Mika whispered.
Jace frowned. Could the kroakers see them? Or could they hear them? The mist seemed impenetrable. Unless they had some magical means to see through it, he didn’t think they could have been spotted.
He didn’t know that the creatures had particularly astute hearing since they were modeled after frogs. But just because something made sense in the real world, didn’t mean it would translate into the game world.
Could the kroakers be smelling them? He had no idea whether frogs or kroakers even had a sense of smell. But if they could smell, that might explain it.
“Let’s slowly move around the lake,” he told them. “Just be ready.”
As he said it, Jace saw that both of them already had their weapons out and ready. Motioning to them, he led them to his right around the lake. The croaking continued but there were too many of them to tell exactly where they were coming from.
Keeping himself ready for an attack that might come at any time from any direction started to wear on Jace. He guessed the girls were in a similar situation. Even Luna seemed nervous, her ears twitching and rotating constantly.
Unlike his feline companion, Jace knew the stakes. If any of them died, they’d respawn all the way back in Lasthaven. That was a problem. Not only was it over a day’s trip to return, but Damian could be waiting for them there.
Then it struck Jace that he wasn’t even sure that the crew would take orders from Diana or Mika. They might be left on the island or worse, killed and thrown overboard. If that happened, they’d lose their corpses and all of their possessions.
As they continued around the lake, it struck Jace that he was hearing croaking and not words. He’d been able to understand every intelligent monster he’d run across with the Monsterspeak ability. So, either it didn’t work with kroakers, or what they were doing wasn’t actually speaking. Maybe it was the kroaker equivalent of whistling.
Or maybe they were kroakers at all, but just very large toads. Until he knew for certain, he had to assume there were kroakers out there. That meant staying ready and staying alert.
Jace watched his compass as they continued around the lake until they once again turned west. Unfortunately, it was almost impossible to determine exactly where they were. He could only hope that they weren’t too far off course.
They travelled west around the shore of the lake for an hour and Jace guessed the lake must take up most of the interior of the island. Unless it wasn’t a lake. It could have been some sort of bog or swamp. With his visibility so limited, he was only guessing. But a swamp or a bog would make just as good a home as a lake to a kroaker. Or so he imagined.
Finally, the lake to their left disappeared and the croaking sounds faded away. Once again, he gathered up his group.
“It sounds like we’re past them,” Diana breathed, her face a mask of relief. “At least, I hope that’s what the relative silence means.”
The older woman still seemed overly nervous. Her face was pale, and her breath was shallow. “Are you okay?”
Diana forced a smile. “I just really hate… frogs.”
“Are you okay now?” Jace asked again. “Do we need to rest for a bit?”
Mika put her hand on Diana’s shoulder and the older woman smiled. This time it was genuine. “No, I’ll be okay. The further we get from them, the better.”
“Okay,” Jace said. “Let’s get moving. The sooner we find the treasure, the sooner we can get off the island.”
“Treasure?” Came a low deep voice that reverberated from the mist. “They’re after treasure? What a bunch of idiots.”
He and the two women were instantly alert, as was Luna. Diana’s eyes were wide again. “I just heard someone speak, right? I’m not imagining it?”
“No,” Jace hissed. “There’s someone out there in the mist and he heard us.”
“You can... understand me?” came the voice. The voice was deep and resonating but not threatening.
“We can,” Jace replied. “Who are you?”
“Interesting. Very interesting,” the voice said. “How is it you understand me, human?”
“Are you a monster?” Jace asked.
“Monster?!” the voice replied with a tone of indignation. “What is a monster? What makes one a monster? Is it the outward appearance? Or is it what is inside that really makes the monster?”
The group exchanged glances. Jace was sure this was a monster player, but he hadn’t sensed it like he had with the others. When he came near a player who had been affected by the code which Damian had written, he could “sense” them. Sometimes, it could be for miles. This time there was nothing.
“Were you once a human?” Jace asked. “But now you’re something else?”
There was a long moment of silence before the voice answered. “I dreamed I was human, once upon a time. Then I was many things. But no longer.”
“You’re a kroaker now?” Jace guessed.
“And you’re a human,” the voice said.
“I was a monster too once,” Jace told him. “All of us were. I know how to turn you back to being human.”
More silence. This time, it lasted longer and Jace started to believe the person had left.
“Interesting,” the voice said, its tone neutral. “You were a monster?”
“I was,” Jace told him. “A goblin, an ogre, a kobold and a few other things.”
“I was a yeti,” Mika offered.
“And you turned into a human at some point?” the voice inquired.
“I used to work for WorldCog,” Jace told the voice. “I was a programmer. I managed to ‘hack’ the game and turn myself human.”
“Hmm,” the voice responded, the sound vibrating the mist around them. It seemed to come from everywhere around them. Having never spoken to a kroaker, he wondered if this was the way they sounded all the time. “So, you learned how to change yourself from a monster to a human? And now you offer this same ability to me? Why?”
“Why?” Jace asked, confused. “So you can turn back into a human. So you don’t have to keep hopping from body to body. So you can talk to other people. Don’t you want that?”
“Stop hopping?” the voice said. “I haven’t hopped for a very long time. I have to die to hop to another body and I haven’t died in a very long time.”
“Don’t
you want to be human again?” Mika asked.
“I don’t think he does,” whispered Diana.
“What is there for me as a human?” the voice said with a sad inflection. “There is nothing for me. There is no one waiting. No one looking. No one even checking up on me to make sure I got into the game.”
“Some malicious code did this,” Jace explained. “No one knew except for the person who created the code. It was taking the money from people who died and funneling it to him while trapping the person in a monster body so they couldn’t tell anyone.”
“Interesting,” the voice said. “So, a human creates a program that makes humans into monsters, all so he can steal their money. Tell me. Who is the real monster?”
Jace was starting to get a bad feeling about this person. Once before, he’d met a goblin who had been a human. He had called himself “Big Cheese” and he had gone mad. He’d ended up killing Jace and then disappearing before Jace could deal with him. Now, Jace wondered if this person had gone crazy too.
Maybe that happened. Maybe jumping bodies too many times eventually drove a person crazy. If that were the case, he doubted just turning them human would “fix” them. They’d probably need years of therapy, and there was a lack of therapists in VEIL Online.
“Damian is the monster,” Mika responded before Jace could reply. “He is evil.”
“Damian,” the voice repeated. “Is that his name? Yes, condemning people to torture and stealing their money would make him the monster. Not you or I. So does it really matter what we are or what we look like? Is it really what is on the outside that makes us the monster?”
“No,” Jace admitted. “It’s what kind a person you are on the inside that makes you a monster.”
“And what kind of person are you on the inside?” the voice asked.
Jace opened his mouth to speak but Mika beat him to it. “Jace is a good person! He is helping people! He helped me and Diana and others. He is a good person.”
“Is he now? Or are those just the words of someone in love? People can still love a monster, you know. A drug lord’s wife might still love him. A mobster’s wife. A dictator’s wife. They may even see the monster but their love for them blinds them,” the voice replied.
Veil Online - Book 3: An Epic LitRPG Adventure Page 8