Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (20 page)

“Show Melissa Constance.” I wondered where Melissa was. She and Adam had been going out last I checked. The young girl looked almost mousy and kept a knitted hat pulled over her face. The machine threw up a box.

I paused and frowned at the response screen. It floated there indifferently in Trillium’s van. These four normally played together or at least had during my two experiences with them. It sounded like the parties were divided right now. Real life got in the way of game time. That was awfully inconvenient.

They may not even have known each other if it weren’t for me, in the guise of William Carver, getting them together. Certainly HotPants wouldn’t have bothered playing with younger teens. I had been feeling slightly depressed at the secondary role I played in everything, but checking on these players made it easier.

“Show Alan Walters?” my voice went up with a question.

“Fellow league members!” Shadow’s gruff voice piped into the van. It was artificially deep and husky. The young male had managed to mimic every noir protagonist ever. “The time to move is now!”

There was a sea of people wearing dark clothes nearby. The video feed showed a cavern, wide and lit with torches held up in the dark. Each person looked to be from the same cut. Grim faces stared up at Alan, chiseled jaws even on the females.

“At this very moment, my companions are working to clear the path forward! We shall strike at the kingdom’s heart and remove the abomination of a king!”

They cheered and held up bladed weapons in mass. There were swords, daggers, scimitar, sabers, pretty much any kind of stabbing instrument available.

“It is time for the League of Shadows to right this world!” Shadow pounded on the podium. “We move!”

The room went so black that not even my feed of Alan Walter’s ARC showed any visible feedback. There were things going on, people whispered in the background but none of it understandable.

I tried to follow what was going on. It sounded like a grand conspiracy that those four players had gotten mixed up in.

“Show Lia Kingsley,” I said, not holding any hope.

The machine provided me no screen. Dead was dead. Part of me had held some faint hope that Lia might turn out like Xin had. Would she? Or had Xin truly been a one in a billion chance? I wanted to ask Hal Pal, who even now sat in the van’s rear, but part of me couldn’t say those desperate hopes out loud. It was one thing to voice a deeply laid sorrow, quite another to share an unlikely hope. Both required a different kind of bravery, and all mine needed to be reserved for the ring I had settled on.

I kept the feeds up for the
[Legacy Wish]
quartet in the background. They were involved in an adventure. Out here, stuck in the van, I felt like an observer. There was a grand conspiracy in the computer world, and I had a box seat to the show when I really wanted to be one of the actors down below.

The problem revolved around me. In reality, I was nothing but a mouthpiece for the computer, in more ways than one. Inside I had become bound by the consequences of my own actions. Xin, Dusk, and the other people from
[Haven Valley]
, whatever happened next I would struggle to keep them safe inside the computer.

If hell broke loose in the real world, I would use the
[NPC Conspiracy]
to make sure Beth and Liz were protected. There were things even a humble human could do. I repeated the plan in my head over and over to try to drive out a looming sense of dread.

Music kept me company while I hummed along. I let the swelling sounds of Beethoven’s Fifth drown out the memory of a whimpering voice with needles in his skin.

Session Seventy Four - The Bottom of Things

Ten minutes ago, as Continue Online considered time, I had returned to the surface. My small collection of items stolen from dead legless
[Heavenly Body Clone]
creatures hadn’t amounted to much so far. My fifty-eight points of total progress was essentially a wash. Part of the problem was Squisks dying again while I was at work. I tracked the message time and figured he would be back up and running tomorrow, but this dungeon would hopefully be over tonight.

“Wyl,” I said to the stoic looking former guard captain. He stood in the beam of light along with the angry Knight Middleton.

“I’ve told you before, I have nothing to say to you convict,” he responded without looking over.

“So, I can talk to you for another hour if I want.“ My shoulder came up in a shrug. Convicts, such as myself, got a small break upon returning to the surface. The delay allowed us to stagger our reentry if we desired, or team up with spawning members.

“I find little value in what any of you has to say,” he said while I tapped Carver’s cane on the ground.

“Yet, you’re still talking to me.” I could have been polite, but Wyl had never expected it of William. My What Would Carver Do instincts were all out of whack since playing a robot, but part of me remembered them.

The dungeon grind I had been participating in these last few days really wore on my sanity. Darkly lit spots and spiders weren’t helping. It had been three game days since my death, and this was my first solo trip back to the surface to turn in a pitiful amount of items. None of the other players appeared to be fairing much better. Dots went in and out of existence frequently whenever I pinged the dungeon. Viper, oddly enough, was stuck in his location way down near the bottom. Even up here the marker for my one useful team member sat unmoving.

I didn’t have the weight of being a hero or donating to the community behind me. Citing that I had actually played as William Carver would confuse the guard captain and besmirch William’s good name. My only source of credibility, and likely the reason he talked to me, was keeping
[Morrigu’s Gift]
in the old cane shape. I tucked it into my cinch which wrapped around the toga. My body felt tense and annoyed. I leaned to the left, then right, and finally tried to touch my toes. It struck me as odd how limbering myself up in a virtual world equated to relaxation.

“Tell me where you got that staff.” the guard demanded by lifting his hand slightly but it didn’t cross the beam of light’s threshold. That was an opening I needed to make progress with Wyl. There were a few vague truths he could learn, without causing too many problems or compromising my own ethics.

“From William. We met, once, near the end,” I said honestly. “It’s because of him that I’m here today.”

“I refuse to believe Will would have had anything to do with a criminal like yourself,” he said. Both the man’s eyes burned under the helm.

“William Carver guided a lot of new Travelers, and not all went the route of law abiders. Truth be told, the man himself was a hero, but he wasn’t a saint either. Kind of a horn dog actually.” According to his journals anyway. Most players were bobbing along for personal entertainment or exciting adventures. Very few people played Continue Online with the kind of drive required to be the greatest warriors, or extremely giving natures. This virtual world was a game to most people.

“Where did you meet him?” Wyl broke from giving orders as his tone took on a softer note.

“The realm of the Voices. We met there after he died.” I felt like being honest with Wyl would help. It had been my policy to avoid lying anyway. That was just who I was. Most of my untruths were sins of omission and not intended to mislead.

“Carver was a Traveler, and they’re immortal.” The guard captain seemed to forget that I was a Traveler also, at least by his standards. Then again
[NPC Conspiracy]
did sort of mix up their perspectives.

“Travelers can die as well.” My own voice turned low for a moment. What must we look like to NPCs, resurrecting, walking with the Voices, coming round and round again? “Carver did, in the end.”

“Some of them deserve to. Bad enough we have our own thieves and rapists, like you. Then we have to deal with ones from another world that are near impossible to kill. You tell the Voices to let me burn down the whole lot of them,” Knight Middleton said from a few feet to my left. He had been standing there, knees locked liked Wyl, listening to our conversation.

“I’m a Traveler too,” I said to the angry knight. He sounded confused and addressed me as a Local. It happened often.

“You are? You-” his head shook and the man’s eyes glazed over.

“Messenger for the Voices, Traveler and a bit of a Local. Don’t worry, it confuses a lot of people.” I tried to be friendly but the other guard had shut down in contemplation. Both of them were confused about our recent conversation.

“Mh, well, I’m going to get ready for the dungeon. Please don’t shoot me.” I tried to smile.

Wyl glared. I missed the other man, the one who had given me a respected level of camaraderie in my pretend dotage. This place was against both of our natures. I was a wanderer in Continue, Wyl a happy captain who drilled new recruits. We would get back to it.

Shouting, ‘Free cupcakes’ hadn’t worked in the last few days of dungeon crawling. Spare time was also low once I started collecting dead bodies for points. I tried six times to etch Dusk’s summoning circle correctly. The seventh attempt lit a circle of
[Lithum]
runes and the system prompted me to utter an incantation.

“Come out, you little fiend!” I shouted an alternate incantation. Two nameless guards on the wall above twitched their fingers toward crossbows. Nothing happened and my shoulders slumped. Dusk was going to eventually eat through all my money in virtual pastries.

Knight Middleton snorted then said, “Some spell. Traveler or not, you’re a terrible mage Path.”

“I hate Lithium,” I muttered while trying to figure out any other summoning phrase. The circle faded out and they forced me to write it again. This time, there was no hesitation or attempted shouting. “I promise a dozen cupcakes at my earliest convenience,” I said while hanging my head.

The circle’s center flared a bright golden color. Both guards managed to hold still in their safe beams. My bobcat sized version of Dusk popped out in an anxious spin. He ran over to me with a trail of drool hanging from his mouth. Sharp teeth surprisingly didn’t cut through the tongue.

“Really? You want cupcakes already?” my voice flattened.

Dusk nodded. Technically it had been seven game days since he left a mess in my Atrium. Four where I was booted out, and three more of me wandering around trying to get a feel for monsters and the layout.

“Now isn’t that convenient,” I said.

Dusk’s resulting look and the confused question marks above his head clearly implied otherwise. Cupcake time was any time. Maybe that’s how he had grown so big, I was feeding him too much. When we first met, one cupcake would have held him for a few hours. As if to prove his increased weight, the formerly half a cat-sized creature climbed up my side. Sharp claws made me wince, but part of me welcomed the familiarity.

Soon Dusk was hanging his longer head out front, and his tail wound down part of my toga, ruffling it up. It would take me weeks to get used to this larger form. Thankfully he chose the covered shoulder to ride on. Those claws would hurt like hell on bare skin.

“You’re going to need to start flying, instead. You’re too big to keep climbing,” I muttered.

Dusk snorted a small ring of smoke and looked around. The window above his head indicated a search for food. Even a bad tasting monster carcass couldn’t keep his appetite at bay.

“How about sausages?” He shook his head at my suggestion. “Fine, cupcakes, but we’ve got to beat this dungeon tonight. I’m tired of being here, and Xin’s waiting for me out there,” I whispered in his ear. “And I’ve got a present for her, something very shiny and pretty.”

“Yeah. Good luck with that,” Knight Middleton said and snorted.

The
[Messenger’s Pet]
perked up and a serious smile crossed its face. My hand rubbed between his ears slowly, feeling the trail of scales that went all the way down his back. Patting them directly irked the creature, but along the bumps and ridges always gained a happy response. Paying attention to him was far more comforting than the knight’s disdain and general hatred.

“Let’s go, little guy.”

Wyl glared at me, but his expression was a little less harsh than it had been. I shrugged and tucked back one cheek. William Carver’s
[Legacy Wish]
and
[NPC Conspiracy]
gave me a reason to care about this world, but now wasn’t the time or place to keep trying to break through the former guard captain’s skepticism. If I had come back up here more often then perhaps we would be farther along, but running around for hours on end in a multiple floor labyrinth was hard.
[Sight of Mercari]
didn’t come with a map of walls, and my journal entry filled in details gradually.

Dusk and I should make decent progress together. After, Wyl could suffer my demands for information for days until the next dungeon or Xin’s breakout plan went into action. Or I could work, maybe Xin would call me outside the game again.

My waiting a few days had primarily focused on getting used to these new boots and letting my summon skill come back up. When a
[Messenger’s Pet]
died, or left Continue Online’s world, I apparently had to wait eight days to bring him back. The cooldown on this ability was suspiciously long, maybe the Voice of Balance had changed the rules, or there were a few more factors at play with the AI witch hunt back in reality.