The marble floor of the Monument of Life made Jan's footsteps echo. He had gone to Floor 1 after rescuing Merrik and only recently decided to see for himself just how big a threat red players were. Jan still wasn't sure what he would achieve.
A new Guild called the Aincrad Liberation Force had taken control of much of the first floor and Blackthorn castle, but had promised that anyone could see the Monument any time they wished. There were some of the guild members, all wearing the smae uniform, but they had let him pass unchallenged to see the Monument.
The bronze surface had the usernames of all 10,000 players. Nearly a thousand were scratched off. Next to the names the most common cause of death was: fell from a great height – suicide. There were only ones that simply said: Floor 7 Monster, or Floor 9 Boss as the cause.
Then he saw the words: killed by red player. He searched the names, killed by red player, killed by red player. Horror grew as he looked. Killed by red player. All the players that had been willing to commit suicide had done so within the first month and all the stupid ones had been killed with monsters. The Clearers had gotten their act straightened out after the third Floor's boss so their number of casualties had dropped as well. The murder toll had risen in response.
"Killed by red player," he whispered. Merrik was right. The leading cause of death might have been monster or boss or suicide but not anymore. Now the leading cause of death was murder.
I should have stayed with Merrik and Lyra... I should have helped them...
He turned away from the monument and walked back out of the Citadel. Even though eleven floors were open, many of the players had remained in the Town of Beginnings. The market place was full of players and NPC's offering wares that they had made or traded off of some of the few players that strayed outside the town's safe zone.
All of these players, almost 8,000, are staying here because they're too scared to leave. A quiet undercurrent of cnoversations echoed the shouts of wares. It was almost drowned out by the hustle of the marketplace, but oyu could hear it if you focused. There were plenty of reports about monsters or dungeons, but then he heard orange cursor. He stopped and walked over to a crowd.
It was easy to jump onto the top of an NPC's stand to get a better view. The speaker was a male player, stripped of weapons and armor. "There were three of us and then five players came out of the fog and attacked us. They had orange cursors. Their base was on Floor 8 and we were only Level 10 or so, they had double the Levels. It was slaughter. They made me unequip all of my gear and leave it but they let me go."
"Why?" One of the players shouted. "Why you?"
The player shook his head. "I happened to be the last one alive. They told me to pass on a message." He stopped talking.
"Well," one with a spear asked, "what was it?"
"All the high level players are only Floor Eleven, mapping and clearing the dungeon." The survivor trembled, "so there's no one to stop the reds. If we want to return to the Town we have to give them all our drops and half of our col from the day's adventure or they won't let us back into town."
"That's crazy!" Someone shouted. "They expect us to give them all that? We won't have collected enough from the day's troubles to even pay rent for our rooms in the inn!"
"Then stay inside the safe zone," someone next to him snapped. He had a longsword on his right hip.
"Then we really won't get col!" The one snapped right back, banging the butt of the spear he carried on the stone street. "How will we buy food or weapons? We can't!"
"They're bluffing," the one with a longsword said simply. "They have to be."
"They wiped out my party," the survivor whined. "They won't hesitate to do the same. We can hardly petition the Game Managers. Here, anything goes."
Jan nodded agreement as the argument went on. "Yeah, anything goes."
I know this is short, but this is the heart of the problem. With no one paying attention to the lower levels, the red players have free rein to do whatever they please. Everyone who can stop them is too busy to even realize the growing disaster. After their defeat by the floor boss the high level players are, unfortunately, really not going to have the time to deal with red players.
