End Online: Volume 4 (8 page)

Slowly making my way
through the busy passage, I finally arrive at the game store. I look at a few
games as I enter the shop, stopping to see all that is available as I make my
way to the counter.

“Excuse me, is there
anything I can help you with today? Oh, it’s you!” A scrawny man with large
glasses and freckles covering his face says while raising his eyebrows. How
could I ever forget him; immediately recognizing him as the nerdy store clerk
from last time.

“I would like to update my
full body scan.”

“Haha, it’s that time
already, is it?”

“Yeah…”

I start to get incredibly
nervous as he pushes me towards the familiar changing room. I pass him the
storage card from my V-Link, allowing him to insert it into the machine and
push me in.

What happens next is like
the recurrence of a nightmare. The clerk removes my clothes before I get the
chance the object, and a faint glimpse of my naked body is visible as he exits
the pod.

‘She saw me! That
lady just outside the shop definitely saw me!’ 
My face turns crimson in embarrassment.

A slight humming
reverberates through the walls of the machine and a thin stream of light passes
up and down my body. It only takes a couple of minutes until the process is
done. The store clerk quickly appears in the room, helping me into my clothes
and back out of the pod with such efficiency I question whether he is human or not.

“I have already adjusted
your body scan to hide the scar on your back. The same as last time.”

I give him my gratitude,
hurriedly paying the sixty dollars for the scan and leaving the store as fast
as possible.

While I am out, I decide I
should also restock the kitchen now instead of later.

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

A little after 2 P.M., I
arrive at home, tired and exhausted. I make a mental note to do more exercise
in the future as today has made it abundantly clear how much my fitness level
has fallen.

The shopping all goes to
it’s rightful places and I casually turn back to the V-Link. Placing the helmet
back on top of my head while lying down on my bed, I enter virtual reality
without any further issues.

Passing through my locker
and straight into the game, I appear in a small little outcrop of acacia trees
shrouded in darkness. I spot the moon hanging high in the sky, indicating it is
roughly the middle of the night.

“Fen,” I say to the wolf
girl staring curiously at me from the side. “Let’s fight. It has been a long
time since we practiced like this.”

She nods in response and
several dozen shards of ice immediately form in the air. The strange thing
about companions, I happened to learn a while ago, is that they are incapable
of attacking you, no matter the circumstance. Yet, somehow, Fen doesn’t follow
this ironclad rule.

This is possibly the best
practice for training, but I need to make sure I select the option of having a
‘friendly’ duel with her in my menu. Doing this nullifies 95 percent
of damage we cause to each other.

She launches her ice bolts
at me all at once. I immediately send several throwing knives to intercept as
many ice bolts as possible, while nimbly dodging the rest. In an instant, I
traverse the distance between us as I charge forward at high speed.

Perhaps the wolf girl has
come to know a little about my abilities, because she raises up a wall of ice
the moment I start moving. As a result of this and my sudden boost in speed
from having my hood down, I collide spectacularly into the wall and the
afterimage of me five meters away instantly disperses.

‘Tch. I guess that
couldn’t work on you forever.’ 
I give a
silent commendation towards Fen’s adaptability and craftiness.

“Backstab,” I call out,
only for nothing to happen.

Realizing I must have my
direct sight on the target and be within a certain range, I hastily jump back.
Almost as if she can read my mind, Fen flies over the ice wall at the same
time. She is holding a single shortsword of ice in each hand, poised to stab
down as she lands on top of me.  I can use my sacred arts to escape, but
it occurs to me that I should practice being able to do so without calling upon
the system.

I extend one of my legs
and allow my body to slacken. My extended foot comes in contact with the ground
first, and the unexpected contact causes me to lose my balance. The world
revolves and I hit the soft grass with the flat of my back, bouncing awkwardly
and veering off my trajectory enough to escape Fen’s deadly descent.

When my body finally comes
to a stop, I shakily climb back onto my feet and look toward Fen, who is
currently facing the opposite direction. Forgetting about my speed increase in
a rush to take her unaware, I push off from the ground as hard as I possibly can.

My velocity increases at
an astonishing rate and completely surprises me. Everything in sight flies past
fast enough to turn into blurs of red, yellow, and green. Paying the smallest
amount of attention to the the blurring colours around me causes an incessant
buzzing sound in my head, accompanied by an uncomfortable feeling.

With something so
unexpected happening, my body seizes up in shock. Fen barely has enough time to
adopt a surprised expression before I collide with her and cause us both to fly
through the trees in a tangled mess.

We end up flying straight
out of the western side of the grove like a gust of wind. Fen and I finally
land on the dry, water deprived grass, barely losing any momentum as we slide
along the ground downhill in a tangled mess.

We leave a path through
the knee high grass a little over a hundred meters long from our landing. I
stare at the narrow corridor of flattened grass, dumbfounded.

“…Mpfh…” A muffled groan
sounds out from next to me.

Rolling my head to the
side, I see Fen face-planted in the ground. Her snow white hair is a mess and
her red halter dress has been pulled up to her naval. I can’t help but glance
at her long and slender legs, which shine with a milky white radiance.

“Blue…” I mindlessly say
aloud, hastily looking elsewhere while standing up to try and hide the fact
that I saw.

Fen also gets up at
roughly the same time, adjusting herself as she does. As soon as I stop hearing
any noises behind me, I deem it to be safe and turn around. Fen is standing
there while tilting her head curiously at me.

“You were… too fast…” She
stares intently at me while speaking.

I have no response to her,
only feeling the paranoia of her knowing that I saw her exposed undergarments.
I slowly start to head back toward the small acacia grove that my speed caused
us to catapult out from. The wolf girl silently follows behind me as I feel her
icy stare digging into my back.

“Is blue… good?” The
dreaded words sound from behind me and my heart stops.

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

-Mikhail-

“Sir, I am terribly sorry
about this.”

I bow my head in shame,
but he lets out an exasperated sigh and tells me to stand up straight.

“Look Mikhail, it isn’t
your fault. But, I’m curious as to what exactly happened here.” My boss, Henry,
furrows his brow as he speaks.

“We can just overwrite the
data and send me back to where I was before, but I am afraid that the party we
are following and investigating will have already left the area.”

“As I said when you told
me half an hour ago, that is a concern. But there are chances they are still
there. Did you query the player data tables for their current location like I
asked?”

“Sir, I did. The bad news
gets worse. It is not just ‘Lost’ and NPC ‘Fen’; it is now coming up with empty
results on all the party members.”

“What do you mean? All the
players?!”

“Yes, every last one of
them.”

I can see confusion
riddling Henry’s face. This is understandable, considering something is
definitely out of the ordinary here.

“Mikhail.”

“Yes?”

“Quick, log onto ‘End
Online’! We will manually adjust your player settings while you’re in the
game!”

I quickly move to the room
next door while Henry grabs his laptop and storms off to the server room.
Grabbing the custom developer V-Link, I turn the system on and watch the world
fade away through the visor.

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

I eagerly wait outside the
church in Swordbreak for Henry to contact me. The V-Link does not stop people
from hearing external sounds, so it is quite easy for someone to contact the
person in virtual reality or for them to know something is happening to their
real body. The only downside is it is difficult for the person in virtual
reality to respond.

This is where the
company’s custom V-Links are different. They are the only model that does not
block the outgoing speech signals from the brain. Thus, any sounds I make in
the game will be reproduced by my real body, but the stereo effect of hearing
my voice from my real body and from within the game is somewhat nauseating.

“Mikhail, can you
hear me?”
 I hear Henry’s voice through a
receiver in my V-Link.

“Sir, I can hear you.”

“Good, I have
accessed the main system and brought up your player data… Heh, nice name.”

I hear my boss snickering
to himself. My forehead breaks out into a cold sweat as I secretly hope the
name doesn’t become a trend in the office.

“Your player data has
clearly been converted to that of a player. But, it’s strange… you have a skill
that is just a jumble of code. It doesn’t appear to have any purpose to its
existence.”

I glance once again over
the skill ‘False Aura of Confidence’. There is nothing strange about the skill
from the in-game side, except for the fact that it cannot be unequipped.

“Okay, your player
data has been altered. Refreshing the cache and you should notice the
difference in three… two… one… now.”

Looking down at my hands,
I don’t feel any different. Opening my menu also reveals my administrator
controls to still be missing as well.

“Sir, nothing is
different.”

“What? Your data has
clearly been updated. It is right here in front of me.”

“I’m positive sir, nothing
is different.”

I hear curses coming from
the other end of the transmitter in my helmet.

“Sir?”

“I just refreshed the
data again. It has completely reverted to what it was before I updated your
data. What the hell is going on here?”

“Something is up with
Xilbril. It is almost like she is directly interfering with us.”

“We will try
connecting our virtual bodies with the array. If we can talk with her directly,
surely we can reason with her.”

“Sir, she hasn’t spoken
back to us since the early stages of development. What makes you think she will
now?”

“I think she will
because she must. Given what happened to Verity Lee and your recent reports,
something is going on behind the scenes. It could also potentially be related
to the AI ‘child’ that escaped to an external source.”

“What should I do for now?
Shall I assist you in approaching Xilbril?”

“No, you must
continue monitoring the targets. No matter the method.”

“But how, sir? This
character is too weak to travel any distance from the city and they are on the
move!”

“Then go level up!
And do it fast!”

“Sir, your level in ‘End
Online’ doesn’t necessarily indicate your strength. There are multiple factors
that influence it. Such as equipment, stats, and-“

“Then go get
stronger! Whatever you want to call it! Do it, and track down that party of
players!”

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

-Lost-

I am currently sitting on
the fallen tree near where everyone logged out nearly 24 hours ago. One by one,
everyone logs back in and, except for Mason, are all here about half an hour
before the scheduled time. Everyone shows moderate surprise when they notice me
with my hood down and a semi-pleasant expression on my face. After all, it may
not be the first time they’ve seen me without my hood, but it isn’t a sight
they see often.

Verde takes a step back
and looks away in a hurry while Prince Charming gives a satisfactory grunt, not
commenting any further unlike last time. Matrix appears to be surprised at my
new look, but lets us all know that his brother is on the way.

“It’s DONE!” Mason shouts
out the moment he logs on.

“W-what? What is done?” I
ask him in surprise.