End Online: Volume 2

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to
characters, names, locations or incidents are purely coincidental.

Copyright © D. Wolfin 2015

First Edition

Paperback Edition © 2014
ISBN:
978-0-9942421-2-9

By making the purchase of this book you have been granted
non-exclusive, non-transferable, right to access and read the text of this
ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
down-loaded, decompiled reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced in any
way without the explicit permission of the author.

Table Of Contents

Map
. 4-5

A few words from the author
.
6

Chapter 7 – Party of Four
.
7

Chapter 7.5 – The Christmas Update
.
38

Chapter 8 – Farewell Glace
.
44

Chapter 8.5 – Chronix’s Fury
.
76

Chapter 9 – Wolf Girl
85

Chapter 10 – Leaz in Trouble
.
112

Chapter 11 – Grael’s Lair
.
140

Chapter 12 – Two Brothers
.
162

A few words from the author.

Thank you all for your support
and feedback to date. To be compared to some of the greats has been truly
terrific. Hopefully, eventually I will be amongst them.

All your feedback is heard,
there is not a single one I don’t read.

Unfortunately, I won’t be
increasing the size of my novels, primarily based on if I was to do so it would
raise the costs of printing the paperback copies and also send the price of
international shipping through the roof.

Keeping my books a short
50,000 words also allows me to get the next instalment out to all of you
sooner. There are plenty of people who do not want to wait 3 months for a full
novel sized piece.

As for the price, the feedback
is correct in that it is possibly a bit much for the size of the work. But I only
consider that to be in comparison to other works.

I set my price as a standard
$4.99, never any more, and never any less. This method allows you to always
know what you will pay for any future works, including some that will be larger
in size. My concept behind this is, if you have a spare $5, why not support
this author and his work.

Yours Truly, D. Wolfin

-Lost-

Fen shows a lot of
interest in Iceridge as I show her around, although I notice that she glances
behind us from time to time.

‘Don’t worry Fen, if the guards were
going to come again they would have already done so,’ 
I think it just myself as I know it wouldn’t calm her.

Of course I don’t do
nothing while I walk around town, I take the little wolf through all the park
areas and collect herbs as I pass through, I even manage to collect a few that
I have no clue as to the effects, inspecting the item description tells me
nothing too, everything shows as just ‘??’.

For nearly an hour we
explored, I even discovered a lot of new places that I didn’t know existed.
They were mostly player guilds, some owning large buildings with grand
entrances like ‘Blades of Winter’, and even some smaller guilds like
‘Choco Heralds’ that have buildings smaller than a private residence.

The thing that all the
guilds had in common however was out front they all had some form of message
board stating what the guild was about and a mailbox for requests. A few had
other stuff such as a founding members list but that seemed to be optional.

When I arrived back in the
central courtyard, I consider how odd it is that I label it as ‘central’ when
it was in the north side of the Iceridge, Although most players would call
it ‘central’ simply due to the fact that it was the first place new players
came to, plus with all the low levelled NPC shop’s most players used this place
as their centre of playing.

There is only one place
here I need to go, and that is the blacksmith.

Inside there are only a
few players browsing wares, one actually purchasing something at the counter.
If I am to combat the goblins I will need better weapons, so I browse the walls
for short swords.

With less than six gold
coins, there were two I could afford, there is a third but its price tag
for eight gold was over my budget and it also required the player to be level
35, so that was completely out of the question. All of a sudden something in
the corner of the shop catches my attention,  walking over I look in a
wooden crate I could have sworn was not in this shop last time I was here.

As I get closer the
contents of the box reveal themselves. Inside are countless half daggers the
size of my hand, the pile must contain hundreds of them. The hilts
are made of simple carved wood yet they are too small to be held
properly.

There is a sign attached
to the crate which labels them as ‘Iron Throwing Knives’, and states the price
of five silver coins each, or you can buy twenty five for one gold. This is
exactly what I need to work with my ‘Throwing’ skill! So far I have been
throwing small rocks but the progress of the skill seems to have stopped at
skill level 8.

I decide I will purchase
the special deal of twenty five throwing knives for on gold and then the
‘Reinforced Steel Kodachi’, which fortunately was the same type weapon
I was replacing it with, meaning I am already used to it.

They were reasonably
decent weapons and should make dealing with the goblins reasonably easier. The
rugged blacksmith also sold me a leg holster for the throwing knives. It straps
on to my left leg and is made from a stock standard brown leather and has five
slots to place some of the knives, the rest ending up in my inventory.

Fortunately the blacksmith
agreed to dispose of my old weapon again, it held no value so I would not have
been able to sell it otherwise.

Walking outside I intend
to leave the city while It is still day time in the game, but a man standing a
head taller than me and fully equipped in solid steel armour which has been
polished more than I could possibly imagine stands in front of me.

“Excuse me my lord, I was
wondering if you would like to join our party in hunting some kobolds?” The
wavy blonde hair that I’m sure most women dream about after seeing it, it just
so happens that the man in front of me is the one and only Prince Charming.

“No, I would rather not. I
already have a place to go hunting.” I already have my own plans and I plan on
taking full advantage of it.

He
appears to be thinking about something quite intensely, 
‘Don’t strain yourself Mr
Prince, you will get wrinkles and ruin your face.’
 Oh, it
appears he has figured out whatever it was that was on his mind, but I am
already past him and on my out of town.

“The short sword, that
voice, I know who you are! You’re Lost! Aren’t you?” I was stunned, this lady
killer of a man remembers me from training? Well, I was the centre of attention
after all so I should have expected that, yet he managed to figure it out
without being able to discern my face.

“Wait, he is lost?”
Turning to face Prince Charming, I notice that he has another player with in. I
draw a quick intake of breath when I see the woman I noticed at the bazaar a
few weeks ago, nobody could forget that beauty, even if half of it was covered
by a brown hood.

She was wearing the exact
same equipment as when I last saw her, the cloak covering most of her but
through the middle I could see light armour covering various parts of her
figure with some strange form of dark green leather.

“No, no.
His name is 
Lost.
“
Of course this womaniser was familiar with her.

“Congratulations, so
Prince Charming remembers who I am, what about it?” I interject in their
conversation to hurry the talk up and bring it to the end. It worked as well.
Prince Charming is all red in the face short of words.

The woman let out a
small giggle for some reason, the noise penetrating my ears with the
sweet melody of her voice. How does someone become such a desirable person?
Surely she must have done something to her character to be this way. A person
like her would instantly become famous from her beauty alone.

I snap out of my trance
and go to leave but her voice ensnared me once again.

“Well then, if you already
have plans, how about we join you where you are going to go hunt?”

I honestly hadn’t thought
of that before, no doubt having a few more people would allow me to fight
easier. I may get slightly less experience with more people but I will be able
to go further into the dungeon, a major incentive for acquiring items I could
sell for money!

Fen let out an incredibly
menacing growl and the air around me felt like it dropped a few degrees. I told
Fen to stop, fearing the repercussions of her rampaging in the middle of
town. She may be fun sized, but she was still a 2200lb wolf that could
instantly send out deadly ice bolts.

“Very well, then let us be
off, I don’t have any time to play around.” I answer them, relieving the
pressure from their pale faces while I operate my menu to invite them into my
party. It takes a few moments. I can’t seem to find the invite to party option.
The third time going through my menu I notice a party options tab that has the
invite to party button.

As I pressed it, the two
of them in front of me began to green glow, the system pre-empting my
group to be formed into a party. Accepting the selection a
notification informing me the invites have been sent appears but I don’t
see any of their information until the accept the request.

Unsurprisingly the
experience share in this game heavily favoured whoever killed the creature
instead of the how much damage each member inflicted, so with parties the
killing blow awarded seventy percent of the experience and the rest was split
between the other party members. But that only worked if the player who made
the kill was less than 30 levels above that person, so right now if Verde
killed something then I would get no experience.

apparently the level
difference allowed gets larger the higher level the players in the party, but
no one has been able to work out the system or formulae behind it.

So Prince Charming’s
actual character name was Sir Laurence, I had completely forgotten. And the
lady’s name was Verde, simple, yet interesting. What surprised me the most was
the health, stamina and levels that showed up in the party information, running
down the left hand side of my vision.

Their levels are
respectively 47 and 72. Prince Charming even had 203 mana points, which wasn’t
too impressive, but that is because I am comparing it to the boss class monster
next to me. I felt embarrassed that they could see how low my level was.

With all that done, I warn
them not to steal my kills, I look directly at Verde when I speak to try to
emphasise it to her particularly as we head out of town, turning south east.

***************************************************

We walked in silence as
the sun began to sink lower and lower in the evening sky behind us. The only
sound was me calling “Analyse” on every wolf and critter that we passed
by.

I manage to get it all the
way to level 9 thanks to my efforts up to this point, diligently using it
whenever I could.

“So, where are we actually
heading?” Verde breaking the current silence asked me as we broke out into
the low hills where the goblin encampment was.

“Just past hill
over there,” Pointing I indicate which hill I am discussing, “there is a goblin
camp that we cleared out earlier there.” Maybe I should not have said 
we
cleared it out,
but I did kill one of them at least.

“If you have cleared it
out already, what is the point of going back? Monsters outside of dungeons
aren’t respawned until the following day.” Prince Charming has adopted a rather
arrogant attitude since he joined the party, I would like to say that this
isn’t like him, but honestly, him being polite earlier was the oddity in my
memory. I can still recall how he looked down on me back at the Iceridge
Military Academy.

“Because, in that
encampment is a crevice that appears to lead to an underground dungeon.” I
state it in a matter of fact tone, leaving Prince Charming grumbling
behind.

Verde gives a small
exclamation at the surprise of the encampment where there appeared to be
nothing in the hills. I lead our little expedition into the centre of the camp,
taking not of all the loot boxes that have already despawned after being
ignored for too long.

Just as I remember, here
is the crevice. I lead the way down a narrow icy ledge leading down into it.
The path was like a ramp, going back and forth down the walls, narrow enough
that one slip would inevitably lead to falling to death, with no chance to save
yourself.

The path eventually widens
and goes straight into an open cavern, revealing the entrance to the
dungeon.