Spiteful Healer-Chapter 335: Reunion

Level Up!: Unarmed Combat has reached Level 53!

Level Up!: Shield Mastery has reached Level 176!

Level Up!: Leather Armor Proficiency has reached Level 176!

Aegis was panting heavily, sweat dripping from every orifice. “No experience bonus for combat skills sucks,” he dragged the S with a groan.

The three-headed void hydra staring him down ignored him in favor of snapping its three jaws at him.

He’d been training for an in-game week already, seeing good results. He was forced to disengage from the hydra to log out twice already, once nearly luring it onto an unsuspecting group of lower-level players adventuring through the wastes. His repairs and having to log out for classes and sleep were slowing his grinding progress, if compared to how fast he progressed back when he was leveling up with the others.

He’d yet to actually kill one, despite being engaged in combat with them for three in-game days straight. Resetting them returned their health to full, so he’d had to start from scratch repeatedly. Even with spamming Virabhadras, no enraged state was triggered.

The following days of classes and his fight with the hydras did wonders for clearing his head and allowing him to process his thoughts. The other students weren’t even interested in talking about how he oughta save Mikael, or his world notification. All the buzz was about Nicholas’ arrest.

Some had no doubt he was guilty; others questioned the accusations in their entirety. He’d inadvertently heard dozens of arguments for both sides from his classmates, all the while contemplating his own issues.

Another nanotech class came and went. Ashley’s enthusiasm from the first week had turned, as though she constantly had something she wanted to say to Eli, but he never gave her the opportunity to do so.

When Eli got back from class and logged in as Aegis, part of him missed having Lina waiting for him so that he could vent and rant about it. Another part of him was happy he didn’t have to see her disappointment when she’d hear he still hadn’t made a decision. He kept track of her and the other Night Hunters’ progress through his friends list, seeing them along with Amlie and Rakkan gaining levels each time he checked up on them.

He’d logged out at the edge of the lava moat circling the City of the White tree, and wasted no time preparing to head into the wastelands once more, but his livestreaming icon was flashing curiously.

He’d only seen this happen when Hae-won was trying to contact him for some technical issues, which made no sense as he hadn’t been streaming for a few months now. With curiously raised brows, he navigated his interface to press the flashing crossed microphone icon, opening communication with her.

“Yeah?” He spoke to no one in particular.

“Ah, good, hi Aegis. Shinji here,”

He became more curious. “Hey Shinji, everything alright?”

“Yup, more or less. No problems, exactly. Uh, this is concerning something unrelated to the game. Ah, well, not exactly unrelated to the game…”

Shinji was nervous, something very unusual for Aegis. Typically, Shinji was calm, collected, and focused.

“Regarding the recent arrest of the director over at Averon, an Averon Inc. employee has reached out to us. Apparently, VGN was involved in some way, and they’d like to talk with former VGN members about it. They’ve uh…” There was a long, awkward pause. “Any way you could contact Makaroth for us to arrange the meeting?”

“Nope,” Aegis replied with zero hesitation.

Shinji sighed audibly into the call.

“Anything else?”

“No, I suppose not. Sorry for bothering you.”

The interview channel closed, ceasing the blinking. Aegis stood there for a few more moments before shaking his head, walking off as though nothing had happened.

He’d made it a decent way across the wastelands before another blinking popped up in his interface.

This time, it was a message from his friends list interface, sent from Rakkan. Aegis paused, rubbing his chin after spotting Rakkan still in the dungeon raid. He opened the message.

“Yo, Aegis, got a sec?”

“Yeah. What's up?”

“A buddy of mine from Puagas just hit me up. He’s a really nice guy, and he helped us contain Seraxus there for a long while with his airship. He out of the blue messaged me, asking me to ask you for a favor.”

Aegis tipped his head back to stare at the glowing roots of the White Tree tangled through the wasteland cavern’s roof. He already knew what was coming.

“Set up a meeting with Makaroth?”

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess. They’ve gotta be desperate if they’re going through channels like that.”

“Yeah. But he’s a good person. I owe him a lot. I know you still don’t get along with your old man, but could you help him out? Might be something to do with that arrest.”

Aegis hesitated again. For all his disdain for Makaroth, he really liked Rakkan and Shinji. It was hard to say no to both of them back-to-back.

He sighed with reluctance before responding. “Alright, fine, I’ll set it up with Shinji.”

From there, Aegis scrolled down low on his friends list to find a level 93 bard named Jambyri. He rolled his eyes at the name and sent her a message.

“Mom, you’re leveling with Synopse and Makaroth’s rerolls, right?”

“Yup. How’re you doing, sweetie?”

“Fine. Are you guys busy? I need to talk with David outside of the game for a minute.” 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

After a pause, she responded. “He’s logging out right now.”

For some reason, he felt a hint of excitement coming from her. Aegis initiated his own log-out process, but remained in his sim-box. He tapped his wrist implant and called Shinji and David simultaneously. Both answered within a few seconds.

“Eli. How’s it going?” David answered first, speaking in a forced, casual tone.

“One sec,” Eli answered dismissively, waiting for Shinji to join the call. It only took a second.

“Ah, Eli! Did you reconsider?” Shinji spoke hopefully.

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“He’s on the call. Shinji, meet David, the player behind Makaroth. David, this is Shinji, my editor at the Fanta-See network.

Both became very formal in their speech, greeting each other politely.

“They wanted to ask you about some VGN stuff, if that’s alright,” Eli said with little enthusiasm.

“Oh. I see. Uh, I suppose that’s fine…” David responded.

“I’ll arrange a meeting with the Averon employee. One moment.” Shinji put the call on hold, leaving the two alone.

“So uh… all crafting skills advanced, huh? That must’ve been tough.” David went back to his casual tone. Eli didn’t respond. “We’re leveling up pretty fast, playing on Kalmoore, even. We all bought some of your crafted mithril gear; it’s been speeding us along. Impressive stuff! Maybe once we get a bit higher, we can do a dungeon together or something. You, me, your mom, Synopse, all your other friends…”

Eli gave him nothing.

“Meeting’s set up. Sending the invites out now,” Shinji rejoined the call. A ping went to Eli’s sim-box, prompting him to join an office simulation. He left the voice call immediately, hitting the join button.

His body materialized in a coffee shop, with a large round table and eight chairs set around it, each with a white cup of steaming hot coffee.

Eli was the first to materialize, followed by Shinji, David, and, across from them, a young lady of incredible beauty. Eli and David, side by side, had their mouths open as they looked upon her.

It was undoubtedly the player behind Serenity and Yumily. Her facial structure was 1-to-1 from her in-game character, long, sleek black hair trailing down her back. Her casual clothes and lack of makeup made her look much more ‘real’ and ‘normal’, as opposed to her make-up-covered avatar dressed in Yuki’s fantastical garments. She was mindbendingly beautiful.

She gave a timid wave and blushed red in her cheeks at the gaping stares of the two. “Hi, nice to meet you both.” She bowed politely.

Eli and David both bowed back reactively. She turned and spoke with Shinji for a moment, and in that time, David lightly nudged Eli.

“You’ve got a girlfriend, don’t stare like that.”

Eli scoffed. “You’re one to talk. You’ve got mom.”

Tommy, Ryan, and finally Hae-won materialized in the shop. Hae-won must’ve seen how David and Eli reacted to Yumily, because when she appeared, she did a twirl in her standard red V-neck dress towards them expectantly. There was no reaction, and she glared.

Pleasantries were exchanged, and Shinji snapped his fingers to remove one chair with purpose, leaving 7. Eli counted the heads and the chairs, turning his head curiously towards Shinji.

“Who’s the other person coming?”

“Ah… well, we wanted to be thorough for Averon Inc. I believe Renault contacted one other person on our behalf.” Shinji couldn’t look Eli in the eyes.

The final person materialized. A young, dark skinned boy with broad shoulders, black hair styled into cornrows down the base of his neck. He wore a white T-shirt with a black sword on the front, the words ‘Hate the player, not the game’ in stylized text underneath.

He needed no introduction; everyone knew who he was, and his immediate expression was that of disinterest.

“Aite, what ya’ll need from me? I’m a bit busy.” The player behind Seraxus grunted to the gathering of people.

Ryan stepped forward. “Ah, right. Thank you, everyone, for coming. On behalf of Averon, we truly appreciate all of you for joining me in this meeting.” He bowed his head politely, motioning everyone to take seats in the chairs. No one did. Ryan cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I’ll get right to the chase. Averon has reason to believe the charges against Nicholas have been fabricated by our head of cybersecurity, who has also been secretly running VGN behind the scenes.”

Light gasps and looks of shock spread on some faces, but both David and Seraxus remained straight-faced.

“We were hoping you four, as former employees, could help us provide evidence that VGN has been exploiting the position of the head of cybersecurity to gain benefits in the game. If we can tie anything between him and that network, we can use it to prove the charges were falsified, and have things back to normal in no time, possibly even dismantling VGN and its ill-gotten fame.” Ryan spoke clearly, as if he’d rehearsed this several times.

A puff of air escaped Seraxus’ nostrils. “Ya’ll really graspin’ at straws here. VGN did you in good, eh?” He chuckled.

Eli took a step back from the circle of people, shrinking his presence as much as he could. As he’d expected, this had nothing to do with him, but curiosity compelled him to hang around.

Tommy was already rubbing his chin. “I expected it was something along those lines. Never trusted those VGN guys. Way too suspicious, how they rose out of nowhere. You got anything for him, Shinji?”

Eyes fell on the unsuspecting editor. “Ah,” he glanced between the others. “I was never privy to what went on behind the curtain. I edited together clips for news broadcasts and highlight reels. To be honest. I always felt the characters' reactions to the game world were forced, a bit too theatrical most of the time, but genuine emotions of fear and desperation often came out in the boss fights. The part that always felt off was the behaviour of the NPCs and bosses.

“One clip in particular, a snake boss hit enraged and took out all of a streamer's companions but left him alive. By that time, he’d deflated and accepted defeat, but a light tap finished the previously unstoppable boss off. Daehyun, I believe it was.

“The juxtaposition of Daehyun’s surrender and the boss thrashing about and suddenly dying was off-putting, I suppose. It made the entire fight feel staged, despite Daehyun’s actions being completely reasonable from my perspective. VGN chose to bury the clip and delete the footage.”

When Shinji finished speaking, the others went into silent thought for a few moments.

“I’ll admit, circumstances like that occurred for me on more than one occasion. Pushed to the edge with my companions down. But, I always managed to pull through.” David smiled.

Ryan nodded along with both of them. “We’ve been made aware of an exploit in the NPC AI that VGN was using to prevent certain Boss NPCs from dying until certain conditions were met, while targeting specific players and leaving others alive. Those were all stages, but we caught it late, and we won’t be able to link it to the cybersecurity lead unless he attempts to cheat again.”

Ryan’s words wiped the smile clean off of David’s face, but one crept up the side of Eli’s.

“C’mon, y'all,” Seraxus shook his head at his fellow streamers. “Every top VGN streamer at VGN knew they was cheatin’. They were handin’ out legendary artifacts like they were candy. Ya’ll just didn’t question it. Even lil miss princess here knows it,” Seraxus motioned to Serenity, and she lowered her head towards Ryan.

“I’m sorry, I accepted one of the artifacts without thinking. I only wanted to share my music with the world.”

Ryan waved his hands towards her. “It’s alright. None of you actually did anything wrong. We’re aware that Mike and VGN are responsible. Do any of you have any evidence of these suspicious transactions? Anything we can use?”

“All property of VGN, under NDA,” David replied.

“Them contracts were tight as hell,” Seraxus shrugged.

“In hindsight, I should have considered the implications of them being so strict.” Shinji joined in.

“Sorry.” Serenity bowed again.

Ryan let out a frustrated sigh. “Damn.”

“S’all good. I thought Shattered World would stick, but like most VR-MMORPGs, they always got a shelf life.” Seraxus, in a surprising notion of sympathy, patted Ryan’s shoulder. “I’mma keep playin’ till shit hits the fan. Gotta go, party’s waitin on me.” He vanished from the office simulation.

“What will this mean for the future of Averon?” Tommy spoke in a formal tone, a hint of concern.

“For the time being, it should be business as usual. No actual changes can be made to the game world, and Andrew is still handling the monetization side. Nicholas will fight the charges; he’s got good lawyers. It might get bumpy, though. Any attempts to veil favoritism towards VGN will be gone from Mike, and he’ll have access to GM commands such as monitoring players.”

“VGN won’t even need the scrying spell anymore,” David said with wide eyes.

“You mentioned something about linking previous cheating attempts to out them?” Shinji asked.

Ryan nodded. “A specific line of code was used to modify NPC behaviour, within the individual code of the NPC's AI. Upon death, the code was deleted, so there aren’t immediate traces of it. Because Samantha AI knows what it looks like now, if it were used again, she’d detect it immediately, shut down the NPC, and locate the source of the code, which we presume is Mike, or someone else related to VGN. It’d be enough to prove they were behind it.”

Hae-won spoke up for the first time. “Are you saying the only way you’ll catch them is if they cheat again?”

“Basically.” Ryan sighed.

Hae-won chuffed. “As I understand it, more and more players have been joining VGN to get access to the lower world. They’ve got no reason to cheat anymore.” She pulled her lips to the side.

Ryan was lost in thought for a moment, but shook himself out of it. “Thank you for your time, everyone. I didn’t mean to cause alarm. Don’t worry, we’ll sort this out, one way or another.” He bowed respectfully. A few farewells, and he vanished from the simulation.

Eli followed, sitting in his sim-box in silence.

It’s got nothing to do with me. If Shattered World goes down, that makes my decision easier.

Using the sim-box interface, he switched to The Shattered World Online and pressed the ‘start simulation’ button.

A red error flashed across the holographic screen.

Error: Your account has been permanently banned.