.hackENCRPTION
Chapter 2: Book of Twilight
Kaizoku appeared in front of the chaos gate as the yellow rings around his character model disappeared. He looked around the root town Mac Anu and bought a couple of health drinks as well as antidotes. None of his allies on this contact list (even though Tomiko was the only one so far) were logged on, so he typed in a random key word at the gate and warped to train himself.
Delta Quiet Eternal Devil. The field was covered in snow.
"G-g-g-eeeeez, it's c-c-cold…." Kaizoku said to himself. Though everything was virtually simulated, the devise in the VR goggles stimulated the nerves in the brain, causing the player to feel a chill running through him. "Better get to the dungeon. Surely it'll be warm in there."
To his surprise, the dungeon walls were covered in ice.
"Okay… I could be wrong." He walked down the blue halls. Fighting was difficult here seeing that the floor was a bit slippery. Kaizoku managed to get through the first three floors fine, but used up his entire inventory of health drinks just trying to get through two rooms on the fourth basement level.
"Sigh…maybe this field is just too strong." Just as he was turning the corner, a streak of bright yellow light shot past him. He jumped back upon seeing it.
"What the…?" He said, puzzled. He ran in the direction of the beam of light and found the room with the Gott statue. He put the streak behind him and went to open the chest. The moment his character's virtual hand touched the lock, he heard static around the speaker in the VR goggles and the screen started to static as well. A few moments passed until the picture became stable again.
"Huh? What just happened?" He thought. Kaizoku looked down into the chest only to find a book inside.
"A book? I don't' see any other items…" The book was stored in his inventory. He opened the menu and it read "8';;;5 4T"/1(1t". "What kind of item is this? I can't even read it." Kenta pressed the X button on his controller to have Kaizoku use the book, but the screen only showed static when he tried to open it.
Kaizoku gated out back to Mac Anu. He heard a ring and saw in the corner of displayed image in the VR goggle that he had received an e-mail. After logging out, Kenta checked the inbox find a letter from an unknown sender. There was no display picture and the letter was composed of jumbled symbols, random letters, and numbers. The only legible text in the mail was at the bottom.
find the .hackers
"…. Dot…hackers?" Kenta said perplexed. Just then he received a flash mail from Tomiko, inviting him to go to a field and help train. He slid the VR goggle on and logged in.
"There you are." Tomiko said, waiting at the Chaos Gate.
"So, where are we going anyway?"
"It's an area I found not that long ago." She said as she typed in "Delta Raging Passionate Melody" Soon, both players were surrounded with gold circles as they warped to a desert wasteland. "Okay. We just clear out the area of monsters and we should really level up."
The two ran about the field searching for magic portals. Tomiko was right. She and Kaizoku had leveled up at least 3 times after clearing the area of portals.
"Hm. The map shows one more in this area." Kaizoku stated.
"Well, let's get it then." Unbeknown to them, a modified monster was ready to spawn from the portal whenever a player got too close to it. The Twin Blade and Long Arm ran up to it and found a monster covered in green transparent hexagons. "What? A data bug?"
At that instant, the Kaizoku character started to static. The data bug stopped suddenly and looked down at the Twin Blade.
"Hm?" Kaizoku stared up at the monster. He had no time to worry about the glitch in his character model. He opened the items menu to take out a scroll to use on the beast. While searching through his inventory, he found the book item he obtained earlier and was able to read it. "Book of Twilight?" Kaizoku said, reading off the screen.
"Book of what?" his partner asked. Kaizoku had already selected "USE" from the menu and was successful in opening the book. Kaizoku looked at it but suddenly, what seemed as electric bolts came bursting out of it. Some came in contact with the data bug and Kaizoku noticed that some of the green hexagons covering it disappeared. Before he could do anymore, the area was illuminated in a large flash and everything went black on the screen. "SYSTEM ERROR" was blinking in bold red letters. Kenta slipped off the VR goggles and put them on his desk.
"What... what just happened there?" he wondered.
End of chapter 2
(This one was shorter then the first, but I'll try to make the next one longer)
Next Chapter: Drained Data