End Online: Volume 3 (11 page)

“Ah you’re back! I will
have a word with you! My daughter came back covered in tears and snot this
morning. Care to explain yourselves?”

“I’m sorry Rix.” I give
him a voice as sincere as I can manage, which is probably pointless given the
intimidating aura my class skill gave off. “We were discovered by your daughter
at the same time as we discovered where she was running off with that bread.”

“W-What! I told you not to
get caught!” His anger continues to rise, most of the players in the inn have
stopped talking and were keenly listening in to our conversation. “A… Anyway,
tell me. What exactly was happening each morning?”

“Sir, your daughter was
taking the bread each morning and meeting a young boy outside the walls. I
don’t know exactly what they got up to as we were discovered as soon as we
caught her.”

Rix doesn’t say anything
back. I also explain how he had run off saying he couldn’t come back again but
he seems completely oblivious to everything after hearing the word ‘boy’.

Finally, after regaining a
fraction of his calm, he speaks once more.

“So that’s it.” His voice
is quiet, but it contains a ferocity I never want to be on the receiving
end of. “How dare this ‘boy’ sneak around to see me daughter. Lost, I don’t
care what you have to do. Find this ‘boy’, and bring him to me!”

‘What kind of reward is that?! This
was a rare quest, and the reward was detrimental!’ 

I scream in my mind at the
useless reward, but I am shortly interrupted by a new quest appearing in
front of me.

-Lost-

As soon as I complete my
quest, my world fills with shock. I worked so hard to do a good deed for
another person. Yet the reward was not only worthless, it was detrimental.

I read that one point over
and over again. At the same time, I notice everyone else’s faces darken. I have
no doubts in my mind that they are feeling exactly the same as I am.

With the new quest that he
offers me, however, another piece of my heart seems to blacken. Not only can I
not refuse the quest, but it may potentially end with another negative reward
if I am not careful.

“H-how could I possibly
refuse you?” My voice stutters a bit, still feeling dismay.

“Good, now go find him,”
Rix speaks in a low threatening tone before turning around and returning to his
duties.

I face the rest of my
party members and inhale a deep breath.

“So, what now?” I ask them
without any expectations.

“Well, you’re the leader.
Is it not up to you to decide where we go next?” Mason gives me a wry smile,
forcing the responsibility of decision making solely onto me.

I forcefully resign
myself, accepting that I will need to give everyone a direction to move in.

“We need to find that boy
somehow,” I sigh, thinking how difficult it is going to be. “Do we have any
clues as to where he is?”

“I also don’t know what he
looks like.” Matrix appears somewhat shy as he speaks out. This is a serious
issue, how can we find this kid if we don’t know what he looks like?

“He is the same height as
Rix’s daughter. He also wears cheap brown clothes and a beanie on his head.”
Verde gives a rough description of the boy. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough
for me.

“There are bound to be a
lot of boys with that description. Also, there is no guarantee that he will be
wearing the same clothes when we find him right? The fact that he appears to be
from a poor family does narrow our search down slightly. However, we can’t
assume his looks based off what he was wearing. Did you notice anything unique
about him, Verde?”

She pouts slightly as I
explain to her that we need more.

“Not that I saw.”

“My lady!” Prince Charming
raises his voice, cutting off everyone else mid thought, “The VL automatically
records the last six hours of gameplay from your perspective. It isn’t much
good for making a video, but you should be able to get a picture of what this
boy looks like from it.”

That is an excellent idea.
If we have a picture of the boy it will make recognizing him all that much
easier.

“But how am I supposed to
show it to everyone?” Verde asks. “I can’t exactly bring the image into the
game.”

Mason suddenly raises his
hand, bringing it to be next to his head while extending one finger up.

“There should be two
options to do that. The first is utilize one of the ‘friend’ functions of the
VL. By registering us as friends you can invite us into your personal locker.
From there, we should be able to view the image from the memory unit.”

Verde shows some
awkwardness about the idea, but Mason then raises another finger.

“Option two. You get the
image of the boy and upload it to the End Forums. From there, the rest of us
will be able to look at your post with the picture. It shouldn’t matter if half
the players on the internet see it. They have no information on our quest so
they will probably ignore it.”

Verde seems to ponder,
casting her head down as she thinks.

“I will upload the picture
to the forums,” she exclaims. “It will probably take a bit of time before I
manage to though. Once I do, I will post it as ‘The Mysterious Boy’.”

“I guess that is it.” I
produce a clap of my hands to get everyone’s attention. “The time in real life
should be quite late. Shall we meet back here tomorrow morning at nine?”

It is a fair opinion, the
current time in real life was currently well past midnight. It is actually
surprising how everyone is still online. That prince has university that he
apparently attends and Verde doesn’t exactly play full time either.

Everyone nods their head
as I offer to meet up at nine in the morning. The good thing about this game
being eighteen plus is that there is little need to worry about school times.
It would be incredibly inconvenient trying to play with someone that could only
put in about four to five hours a day.

I open my game menu and
select to log out. Back in the real world, I slowly open my eyes to the
darkness in my room.

Next to my bed, my clock
is faintly ticking away. It is currently 1:47am. Strangely enough, I don’t feel
tired. Sitting up on the bed wide awake, I wonder what I should do next.

My computer has a small
LED blinking, indicating that it is currently in sleep mode. Using both my
hands to shift myself, I drag my body off the bed and into the chair.

A few minutes later, I am
in front of my computer, the End Forums open in front of me.

On the main page is simply
the most recent popular posts. There is one about a player caller Uldermaen,
one of the current top players. He is at a massive level 251 and currently exploring
some high level dungeon that most people would require a full party to safely
enter.

Second is some form of
news show about what is currently happening in the game. The coverage seems to
be centered on the main cities, but it includes information from the entire
continent that we play on.

“Currently, in Swordbreak,
the guild ‘Silver Blades’ has been rising in popularity at a tremendous speed.
For a guild that only started a month ago, it now has over two thousand members
and is still getting bigger. It is simply unfortunate that they are accepting
simply everyone who applies.”

“Next on the agenda, is a
bounty in Grenton, the capital of Forste. A player started a fire in some small
alley, which in turn led to a total of five and a half buildings being burnt
down. The bounty is for fifty gold, a massive amount for most bounties.
Apparently, the high bounty is due to it being a special case. The first was
incredibly slow spreading and no matter what people tried, they simply could
not put out the fire! It raged for a full six hours according to witness
reports.”

I stop the video, guilt
tracking through my mind. I do not look at the footage of the fire, but I can
recall the kind of fire that it must be. If only someone had thought to use a
burn remedy, then they would surely have been able to extinguish it.

I only wanted to test out
my new skill, but I can’t believe how careless I was!

I search for ‘The
Mysterious Boy’ in hopes that Verde has already made the post. A lot of posts
involving the word ‘mysterious’ or ‘boy’ show up, but there were none with that
exact title.

Expecting to be waiting
for at least an hour, I read through the general in game news while I wait.

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

-Mason-

I sit in front of my
computer with a bowl of rice noodles with beef in front of me. I search through
the End Forums for Verde’s post with the picture of this boy that we will be
looking for.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t
been posted yet.

I open my account and
follow a link to my most recent video. The recording took me an entire day to
edit, but it was worth the effort in the end. The finished product gave me more
pride than anything of mine that predates it.

Mostly due to the fact that
I have been so busy with playing the game, but up till this point, I haven’t
had a proper chance to check up on the video.

As I open the link to it
my stomach drops. It is not the feeling of dread that would usually cause this
reaction, but one of complete and utter disbelief.

My last few videos were
the ones that received the highest views, a little over a thousand each. But
this current video so far has just hit forty eight thousand views, with over a
hundred comments already.

The conversation that started
in the comments just kept on going with no end. A lot of people were wondering
about where this new dungeon was and such. But most of them were curious about
Lost, who showed his incredible speed, and Fen, the stunning girl who could
silently cast magic.

But there is one thing
that is a definite, having Lost and the others in my videos is an incredible
thing.

Next, I look up the
revenue that this video has made. There are three advertisement slots on this
video as usual and they are all sold. Each spot sold for about a hundred
dollars each which is surprising. But I know that if they had sold when the
video had gained this much interest, then surely it would have been a lot more.

I go back to the main page
of the site and run another search on ‘The Mysterious Boy’. The post I am
looking for comes up directly. It was even posted by the player Verde. This is
definitely the post I have been waiting on.

There is no text or
message with the image. It is simply the title of the post with the image of
the boy in the body of the message.

I get what Verde meant
when she said this boy looks like he comes from a poor family. His clothes,
while stitched together excellently, are made from some low quality material.

Now that I understand what
this boy looks like, I head off to bed. Our parents can’t really afford much
and we have sold off a lot of things, so my brother and I share the same bed.

‘Fortunately, it is a
decent sized bed’
 I think to myself as
I climb into my side of it.

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

-Lost-

As soon as I wake up in
the morning, I have some cereal for breakfast before putting the VL on and
entering virtual reality.

I receive a bit of a shock
when I enter my locker. Fen is sitting cross legged on the couch watching some
breakfast news show on the tv. She is so intent on watching it that she doesn’t
even notice that I am there.

I have started taking the
habit of taking my hood off when I’m in my locker. Mainly because lately Fen
gets grumpy about me wearing it for some strange reason. She hasn’t prevented
me from logging off again, but the fear of that moment still remains buried
inside of me.

“Fen, what are you doing?”
I casually ask her.

The girl sitting on the
couch doesn’t show any sign that she heard me, as she stays seated in the exact
same position.

I stroll around the side
of the sofa and notice why. Her eyes are glued to the tv like some child
watching their favourite cartoon. She is completely unable to look away.

Raising my hand, I place
it between her and the tv, blocking her line of sight.

Finally registering that I
am right next to her, her whole body visibly jumps in shock and she nearly
falls sideways.

“Why… did you… do that?”
She asked in somewhat of a lifeless voice.

“Hmm, I suppose I wanted
to get your attention.”

Fen gives me a quizzical
look, still unsure of my intentions.

“It is time for us to log
back on. We are all meeting up in an hour and I have a few things I want to do
beforehand.”