After absorbing the knowledge, rlin reached for a handful of the loose sheets that were laying around at his feet. He attempted to read what was on the page, it seed that the beginner knowledge was enough to understand the context, but there were a several words that most likely expanded the story into greater detail that he simply couldn’t understand.
The general context he managed to figure out was that the vampire had one day suddenly found himself lost and alone in the forest. There was a specific passage that ntioned that this was a strange world where contact with sunlight caused the vampire’s skin to burn.
rlin believed this passage confird his theory that sothing strange and unusual was going on. The reason the vampire seed out of place was because it actually was. The vampire had seemingly been taken from another world, or dinsion, and plopped into this one without warning.
Most of the other sheets on this table spoke about its attempts at creating allies. It seed as though the vampire’s usual thods weren’t working the sa way as he expected. So the vampire discovered an abandoned building and began rigorous testing on any native life forms it could find.
It seed to be testing on animals at first, bats and rats being the most common, but also the occasional wolf. It then quickly expanded out to humans once it discovered the nearby trade route.
It seed the first task was to create the vampire’s kin through various unconventional thods, which coincidentally led to the developnt of ravenous ghouls. It seed the first few test subjects were a lost cause but eventually the vampire discovered a thod to create other vampires, sort of.
It seed these vampires were no better than ghouls at first, but subsequent attempts resulted in a more stable creature. They couldn’t communicate but they were able to obey simple instructions, and the biggest bonus of all was that they didn’t burn up in the sun.
rlin grabbed a stack of sheets and made his way over to the other desk, the one that had several vials full of strange looking liquids. This desk also had various docunts, although they were stacked neatly in a pile.
rlin placed the various loose sheets of paper down on the desk, and picked a few sheets from the pile. He attempted to read them, but he found it near impossible. Most of the docunts were almost incomprehensible, they were riddled with endless jargon and eccentric reports of testing.
By this point everyone else had finally healed, rlin could hear their pained groans as they started standing back up.
"Is everyone alright?" Zankoku asked, to which he received a variety of answers. The person in the worst shape seed to be Nora, who appeared shaken up by what had just happened. Then Zankoku turned to rlin, who was still reading through paper. "What about you rlin, you doing ok?"
rlin turned away from his attempts at reading, he turned to face Zankoku, but found that it was a little inconvenient to turn his head.
"A little stiff around the neck, but I’m fine otherwise." He said while cracking his neck. "What kind of guy throws soone by the head anyway? That sucked."
He received a couple chuckles in response, but it seed everyone was low on energy at the mont.
"So, you’ve been reading for a couple minutes, have you figured out anything interesting?" Zankoku asked, to which rlin briefly explained the story he had put together about the vampire’s life.
"Wait, so vampires aren’t normally in this world?" Alvira asked with a disappointed tone.
"There are still vampires, don’t worry." rlin reassured her. He didn’t know how much he could reveal without seeming suspicious, but he ca up with an easy explanation, so he briefly told them where to go. "There are vampires and other undead north-west of Caphyae. Although you’re going to need a lot more levels before you try it."
"How do you know that?" A few people in the group asked.
"I played this ga briefly during the closed alpha and testing stage. Most of the undead were put in the sa area, and it doesn’t seem like much has changed from then and now so they’re most likely still up there." rlin explained.
It wasn’t a lie, although he could barely rember much from the alpha test aside from the final demo. And he only rembered the final demo because it was the day of the incident that sent him to the dical bay a few days before his exams.
"That explains the fancy machine." Alvira mumbled out loud, she seed convinced. "And everything else, really."
The rest of the group nodded, they seed satisfied, like they solved a mystery that had them scratching their heads.
"So this is why you’re always first on the leaderboard?" Alvira asked. "You’ve played all of this before."
"Well, I haven’t done any of the quests before. The story is new to ." rlin tried explaining in such a way that he wasn’t accused of cheating. "The alpha test was just everyone ssing around on an admin account and testing a bunch of features out like casting magic or interacting with things."
"All I really did during the alpha was play with magic and try learn how to do a flip." rlin continued downplaying it, "So it’s probably just that I had more experience moving around and doing things at first, and that eventually snowballed into taking the top spot."
"What about Snow and scythe guy?" Alvira asked, she seed to be a bit disheartened hearing that rlin had an obvious advantage, even though he tried to minimise it as much as possible while explaining it. "Were they in the alpha too?"
"No, no. The alpha was just the developers, I was only invited to play around a couple tis because of family reasons." rlin continued trying to downplay it. "Rather, those two are surprisingly good at this. It took a while before I figured out how to do things, but those two are naturals."
Alvira seed content with rlin’s answer, but he couldn’t help but think he went the wrong way about it now. Even if they were better behaved than the others, they were still part of the upper class and mbers of famous families. Those kinds of people were famous for being especially bad when it ca to their inferiority complexes.
"Well, I think we should start breaking these people out." rlin changed the subject, "There is probably a set of keys around sowhere for these cages, along with other loot."
The group started searching around, there was a couple weapons laying around and a few trinkets, but nothing rlin could really use or wanted. A couple of the vials of strange liquids glowed faintly, indicating that they were lootable, but nobody wanted to touch them because they looked dangerous, so rlin decided he’d take them. Unfortunately, similar to the last vial of strange liquid he looted, the information on it was hidden and required an appraisal skill.
The group eventually found a ring of keys for the cages. The keys were hidden in the pile of dust and were only found once Nora broke her eerie silence and began angrily kicking the dust around. She seed to be in better shape after expelling her frustrations, but she still didn’t talk much.
With the keys in hand, rlin started unlocking all the cages that had people in them. They were all still a delirious state, and it was likely that they would snap out of it eventually.
Zankoku sohow got the bright idea that slapping an NPC would wake them up, similar to how rlin told them to slap Nora. But he was t with nothing but a light reduction in karma.
Eventually all the cages were unlocked, and the group slowly helped them out of the building one by one, laying them on the forest floor outside the abandoned church.
Once rlin carried the last captive out of the building, he received several notification ssages.
「You have solved an issue caused by a strange phenonon.」
「The quest "The Caphyae Kidnappings." has been updated.」
"A strange phenonon." rlin mumbled those words out loud. It seed familiar, and then it clicked, the shattered sky quest had a similar wording.
He wasn’t completely certain if this was related to that quest, but it made sense to him. It did warn that it would increase the possibility of strange phenonon happening around him, but he wasn’t entirely sure what that ant.
rlin started casting cleanse on the entire party while they spoke about what to do next. Eventually the NPCs started snapping out of their drug-fuelled haze and slowly regained the ability to think. A lot of the NPCs seed terrified, but cald down when reassured that they were safe.
One of the NPCs, a frail looking woman, was frantically searching around while screaming out what rlin assud was a woman’s na. After scanning every face crowded around, the NPC approached rlin’s party. She started asking questions about her sister, saying that perhaps they missed soone and began screaming out descriptions.
Everyone slowly realised who she was talking about, rlin decided that he was going to be the one to go back into the crypt. He ca back up a few minutes later with the pale corpse of a woman in his arms, and a thick stack of rolled up paper in his hand.
When the woman saw the corpse rlin was carrying, she broke down in tears. rlin gently placed the corpse on the forest floor, and the woman fell to her knees beside it. Everyone stood around silently as the woman cried. She held her sister’s lifeless body tightly in her arms.
Reviews
All reviews (0)