End Online: Volume 6 (20 page)

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- Lost -

After Verde ran away
yesterday with the gold I gave her, we didn’t see her return to the tavern
until now: the following afternoon.

“How did it go?” I ask her
curiously while suspiciously wondering if she actually did the training or not.

“It went well!”

Verde smiles and appears
quite pleased with herself. I’m sure there is more that she isn’t telling me,
but I’m happy as long as she practiced lockpicking and can more safely help us
steal the stone tablet.

The afternoon soon shifts
to night as we finalize our plan and check our gear. My tension rises with the
pressure to succeed hanging over my head.

“It’s time,” I say
nervously as the stroke of eleven echoes from the clock tower.

Gladox approaches and
hardily claps me on the back before saying, “Don’t be so tense! This is only a
game, there’s no need to worry so much about it.”

I am tempted to tease him
about how it can be only a game when he is the one who seems to spend ninety
percent or more of his time in it, but decide to let it go. This may truly be
only a game to a player like me, but it is much more than that to Fen.

I glance at the beauty in
question next to me before steeling my resolve and forcing myself to be
confident.

“Okay, we need to succeed
in getting that tablet tonight. We all know our roles, so let’s go!”

The five of us leave the
tavern and head toward the Koga Heritage Museum. We walk through the streets
silently, listening to the few conversations of players as we pass by.

Half an hour later, as the
moon begins to dip in the starry sky, we finally arrive at the museum. Just as
I had suspected: this is an important site in the city, so there are city
guards patrolling the building even this late at night.

Standing in a dark corner
of the street with the rest of the party, I pay attention to how many guards
there are, as well as what paths they take.

“Verde, how long do you
need to open a door? There is a rear entrance that we can enter through, but
the guards pass by every five minutes or so.”

“If it is a three-pin
lock, I can do it. Any more than that and it will take too long.”

“We won’t know until we
get there. Verde, Fen, let’s go. As per the plan, Sir Laurence and Gladox, you
will be our eyes outside. Let us know as soon as there are any changes.”

“Roger that.”

Gladox seems to be taking
this break-in rather lightly. I want to tell him to be a bit more serious, but
I don’t think he is that kind of person.

I leave with the two girls
and sidle up to the side of the Museum just as the guard’s foot disappears
around the far corner. My pure white equipment is considerably detrimental to
hiding in the shadows, so I’ve done my best to plan this mission with staying
completely out of sight as my priority.

We sneak around the
building, following the guard’s path to the rear where the back door is.
Quicker footsteps echo from around the side of the building where we just came
from and I immediately tense up. Sending a quick signal to the others, we rush
to a small group of trees in a garden and hide behind them.

The guard walks around the
corner to the rear of the building just as we manage to catch our breath. I
slowly tilt my head and peek around the tree to see what he is doing. The guard
has stopped and is standing in place while eyeing the surroundings, an action
that the other patrols I observed never did.

The city guard’s helmet
doesn’t cover his face and I can see his nose twitching.

‘He’s sniffing the
air?’
I say in my mind with a stunned
expression.

I suddenly realize: Koga
City is home to the dog-kin beastmen. Dogs have an excellent sense of smell. Of
course the guards have this kind of ability.

If the guard can sniff us
out, then all our previous planning was useless. Sweat starts forming on my
brow as the guard follows his nose and cautiously walks in our direction. I
pull my head back behind the tree as he reaches the five meter mark. His
footsteps continue to get louder and just as I am nearing despair, another
guard in the distance loudly calls out about an attack.

The guard stops at just
the other side of the tree... but rather than continuing to search for the
source of the scent, he rushes off to aid the other guard.

I wonder what happened
over there, but am not about to pass up this opportunity. Throwing aside my
curiosity, I signal Verde and Fen and we rush to the rear door.

“How is it? Will five
minutes be enough?” I nervously ask Verde as she inspects the lock.

“Not good! It’s a six pin
lock. There will definitely be a trap or two as well. I would estimate it’s
going to take me a good twenty minutes to open it without alerting the guards.”

“That won’t work. They
will find us before we have a chance to get inside.”

This development dashes
the tattered remains of my previous plan to unsalvageable pieces. I rapidly try
to think of a solution – anything that will get us inside.

I happen to look back at
the trees that we were hiding behind, and notice that most of them are taller
than the museum. They are too far away to climb up and jump onto the building,
but the perspective does give me an idea that I quickly latch onto.

“We will go through the
roof! Partial Draconic Transformation!”

Wings sprout from my back
and the transformation is finished in a blur of white. Without warning, I grab
Fen and Verde and fly up toward the roof. The weight of the two surprised women
overburdens my flight, and I only manage to get halfway up before sinking back
to the ground.

“Damn! Fen, can you make
footholds of ice?” I ask, hoping to instead reach the top with an incremental
process.

Fen shakes her head
softly, letting me know that it isn’t possible. I also voice the idea of an ice
pillar half as tall as the building to use as a rest point, but apparently
Fen’s ice manipulation is more constrained than I thought.

“To the trees, then! Fen,
Verde, climb up as high as you can.”

Following my directions,
the two girls quickly move to the nearest tree and ascend it. Fen’s agility is
much higher than Verde’s so she shoots up it like an arrow. Verde, on the other
hand, displays a rather sad performance as she scrambles up it.

I take to the air and fly
up to the top of the tree where I wait for the two to arrive. Once everyone is
in position, I grab the two and fly across to the roof. I can’t get enough lift
to fly them up from the ground, but gliding across isn’t a problem.

We land on the roof of the
museum just as the guards suppress the disturbance on the other side of the
building and return to their patrol. If they were any quicker, or I slower,
they would have no doubt seen my white form flit across the sky.

The top of the roof is a
flat surface, with several large glass domes and skylights to brighten up the
interior. The windows don’t open, unfortunately, so the only way in from here
is to break one.

Picking the largest window
that I could fit my wings through, I extend one of my clawed fingers and scratch
the edges of the window. A shrill sound is produced from the scraping, so I
work quickly before pushing the glass into the building.

The glass falls from the
roof toward the floor of an empty atrium but I am quicker, jumping in after it
and pumping my wings to catch the glass before it hits the ground and shatters.

Gently laying the glass on
the ground, I fly back up to the roof where Fen and Verde are waiting. I won’t
be able to fly back up with them, so I set up a rope for later before gliding
back down with the two girls.

“We need to move quickly,
I made some noise getting through the window,” I hurriedly whisper to the
others before getting my bearings and choosing which direction we need to go
in.

A strange notification
flashes in my vision, which I skim over before dismissing and moving faster.
Verde starts to fall behind, panicking. She must have received the same
message, which is apparent as she is appearing just as nervous as me.

I hear loud footsteps
approaching from a different hall. It sounds like at least ten guards running
toward us.

I reference my mental map
of the building and quickly direct the other two to take a different route in
order to evade the guards. We run down a few corridors and pass through several
rooms. At the same time, the sound of more guards start approaching from
different directions behind us.

The guards are capable of
following us even if they can’t see us, another situation where they are
tracking via scent. After passing into yet another stone corridor, I briefly
stop and throw several ‘Minor Dire Flames’ at the entrance to block off the
passage and prevent the guards from chasing.

We reach the room housing
the stone tablet and find it to be empty of guards. I feel relieved and exhale
the breath I have been holding. Now more relaxed, I walk up to the display with
Verde and Fen.

Verde steps forward to
inspect the glass case and find a keyhole, though she quickly turns around and
gives me a quizzical gaze. I approach the glass case and instantly see the
dilemma – there is no lock or other mechanism to open it. As she checks the
back of the case for a hidden latch, the familiar echo of running footsteps
reaches our room.

“There’s no other way, we
don’t have time!”

I raise my clawed hand and
make a fist, smashing it down on the glass display. I had expected the case to
shatter, but surprisingly it is undamaged. The only result is a deafening
reverberation shaking the room from the force of my blow hitting an invincible
wall.

“Damn! It’s protected by
the system,” I declare, frustrated after striking the case several more times.
“There isn’t even a scratch!”

Before I can explore other
options to get at the stone tablet, forty guards rush in from the three
entrances to the room and instantly surround us. By the sound of it, there are
even more still coming.

“Halt, burglars! You have
breached the code of law and are under arrest. Men, seize them!”

If it were just a quarter
of the guards here, Fen, Verde and I would have a strong chance of being able
to contend with them. But this is currently far too many to fight. I glance at
Fen and match her gaze, slowly shaking my head in a way to tell her not to
resist them. Resisting will inevitably cause the guards to attack and kill all
of us.

The guards swarm us and
immediately restrain our characters, placing iron chains around our hands and
feet to restrict our movement before dragging us away. We are marched away from
the museum and toward the depths of the city. It is late at night, so there
aren’t as many players as usual, but the ones still on the street look at us
being dragged by the guards and begin to whisper among themselves.

Everyone can tell we have
been arrested and they are trying to guess the cause. It is late at night, so
the most popular speculation is that we are player killers who brazenly
attacked someone within the confines of the Koga City. Surprisingly, not many
players seem to think we were actually caught as thieves. Apparently, “Most
thieves work alone, while player killers attack in numbers”, is the reasoning I
hear one player tell another.

A few people trail behind
the guards dragging us away, following until we are thrown into an
iron-strapped building for lockup.

Inside the prison, Verde
and I are put in separate small rooms. Fen, as a ‘Companion’, is placed in my
room. There is only the one small bed, and I can’t set up any furniture items
while stuck here: if I sleep in the game, we will have to cram together on the
rough cot.

Our prison term is for a
week, meaning there is little we can do if the other AI manages to acquire the
stone tablet within the next seven days. It’s not even seven game days, but
seven days in real life. I close my eyes and silently pray that the tablet
doesn’t get taken in the next week.

“I’m sorry, Fen. You will
have to stay in here for a while, even when I logout. I will come back from
time to time to prepare some food for you. I have plenty of ingredients in my
inventory.”

I smile at the girl
sitting on the bed unfazed before I walk to the door and poke my head through
the gaps in the bars. Doing so is a feature of prison, and can allow a player
to see others who are doing the same. We players have to be careful, however,
because if a guard catches you poking your head out, they will usually attack
with whips or batons.