Chapter 45

"Ugh… where the hell am I?"

I'm lying on the ground in the same ethereal plane that I was the last time. Nothing has changed, there's still the castle in the background, and there's still an overall feeling of awe coming from here.

The only thing that's different is there's a gold wolf sitting in front of me. It lets out a howl and a flash of light turns it into the shade form.

Standing up the best I can, I look it straight in its eye. Something tells me it has different plans for me this time though.

"You return to this place… surprising. Perhaps you are not as weak as I had originally thought you were."

"But enough chat, time is of the essence right now. At the rate things are transgressing this world needs you more than ever."

From how it sounds right now, I'd say it's pretty urgent. I haven't logged on in a while so maybe the NPC got annoyed due to my absence. Makes as much sense as anything in this world.

"What do you have in store for me this time?"

The shade's head looks down at me more since I'm kind of kneeling. Picking myself up all the way, its head follows me once again.

"To protect what you value you will need courage. However, we don't have the time to temper you like a blade."

"I don't see what you're getting at."

"I will have to give you all the secrets that I hold all at once."

Well this is an interesting development. He mentioned the last time I saw him that he held secrets. I learned one of them, the ending blow.

But taking in all of the knowledge at once could have serious side effects. One of which is my brain flat out rejecting the sudden burst of knowledge. Or it may make me go unconscious, leaving me open to loot or be attacked.

"Why can't you just tell me them one at a time?"

"Because time is running out!"

The sudden change in its tone of voice takes me back slightly. Last time he told me I was a hero or something. Now he's saying we're running out of time.

For once could things in my life, online or offline just not be so cryptic? There are so many questions that are unanswered in my life right now. Most of which eat away at my soul and drive me further into madness.

"If you don't listen to me the entire world would be in danger! That's why I need to implant knowledge directly into your mind!"

Again with the yelling, it's becoming a bit unsettling for my taste. It might be getting personal now, but I hate it when people yell.

As a child I was exposed to a lot of screaming… mainly from my mother. The last memory I have of her horrific yelling was when the police took her away after her drunken self had a dispute with my brother.

I'd rather not go into too much detail, it's painful to recall at this point. Just know that's the reason I don't like Neptune a lot. She's always yelling for no reason.

"Is it really that important? Answer me that and I'm all yours."

It takes a step forward with a look of impatience in its eye. That's what I assume at least, but hey I've been wrong before.

"I'm not allowed to discern that right now. What is important though is that you take the knowledge and save this world!"

Once more it yells at me. And once again I step back at his tone of voice. Maybe I should've mentioned that I really hate when people yell at me.

Maybe I'm over thing this whole thing and making it an ordeal. Perhaps getting knowledge that I should receive in intervals isn't so bad. Minus the possibility that my avatar will become unusable.

"Just get it over with before I start to question everything even more. And don't yell anymore."

"Very well… steel your mind."

It takes a few more steps towards me stopping about twelve centimeters from me. Its head tilts down to face my eyes. Looking directly into its one red eye, my body begins to feel… different.

As I stare into the redness even further it begins to engulf my being. It's subtle at first with a hint of awkwardness. Then comes the real storm, the sudden surge of information hits my brain like a barrage of boulders.

"AH! It's tearing me apart!"

"Take it all in… this must be done to ensure the worlds safety."

The pain of having to absorb so much knowledge at once is excruciating, from an avatar's standpoint that is. My head feels like it's about to implode, a worse fate than exploding.

My vision becomes clouded again, and fades to white like when I came to this place. The feeling is just a bit more painful during the return.

"Mmm… Oh god…"

"It's good to see that you're awake." A familiar voice catches my ear.

My eyes shoot open to see who it is. More importantly I thought that I was the only person in this dungeon.

"Neptune?"

"You're forgetting a few more faces."

"Yeah you asshole."

Looking closer as my eyes get adjusted, there are a few more people here. Neptune is one of them, the others include Blanc and Vert.

"I thought you left your laptop at home Vert."

"Noire let me borrow hers. It did take some strenuous effort to get her to budge though."

I can see that actually. But I'm still surprised that Noire lent out her computer. That's more trust than she usually lets us see. It's kind of scary actually.

"What are you guys doing here anyway?"

Vert looks me in the eye before speaking. "We saw that you were on your computer. Neptune relayed the information to us. All of our work was done so…"

"We wanted to see how you were doing." Neptune in her more mature self speaks to me. I might've mentioned it before but I like her when she plays this game more.

"We found your ass passed out right here. You won't believe how many monsters we had to fend off. Went down like little bitches!"

Neptune looks at me with a dead serious expression now. Whatever she's about to say it's going to be a real game changer.

"Why were you passed out anyway?"

The details are fuzzy even to me. The last thing I remember is getting attacked by a wolf then being in a lot of pain. And for some reason my characters stats have gone up.

"Must be a random encounter thing."

The answer I gave doesn't seem to please my friends. It looks as if I'll have to think deep about what happened.

"Ok… there was the Hero's Shade again… this time he gave me a lot of knowledge all at once."

Vert and Blanc start to check a screen of theirs. From the looks of it, they're checking my stats with some sort of database. Makes me feel almost naked having people check my character info.

"Your stats have gone up substantially in a short amount of time. And you have skills that I didn't know existed."

"Damn… just what kind of knowledge is that hero packing?"

Neptune starts to look even more serious than she was already looking. "The hero of Gamindusti… he does exist."

From the sound of that, I'd say the Hero's Shade is a legend amongst players in this game. I must've really hit the jackpot if I am the player who got randomly selected.

"Well, now that we're here, why don't we take out the boss? From what I've heard the loot is amazing here."

"Indeed it is Vert…" The new character in the picture takes us all by surprise.

"Martin? Aren't you sick today?"

His character looks to the ground to avoid eye contact. "I am, but I've begun to feel much better. Sadly I'll be out of school another day due to risk of contagion."

Well this is really a gift from the gods. Vert, Martin and I have gathered in this dungeon to complete it. As well as Blanc and Neptune have come to join us. We'll definitely have the strength to beat the boss now.

"I see…"

"What the hell are we waiting for? We should be bashing that boss' skull in!"

Blanc is right, we're burning daylight right now. Conveniently, the boss door is close to where I passed out. Guess I kind of lucked out on this one.

"Alright…" I pick myself up off the ground. "Let's go get a lot of cash!"

All of us let out a pre-victory cheer and then mobilize towards the boss door. Just thinking about the rewards of this boss is making me shiver. And I'll get to test out those fun new skills I picked up.

"So, what are you going to use your earnings on Martin?"

"I'd rather not say." He gives a suggestive glance towards Vert.

"What are you going to do with it Vert?"

"I cannot say either." She gives another suggestive glance towards Martin.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what they're getting at. Already I can feel my cheeks being stained red from the thought. Just why did they have to say that?

"Ok you two, here's the boss door." Neptune calms down the situation.

Sure enough we're standing in front of a very decorative door. All of us are hesitant to open it… except for one of us.

"Let's do this bitches!"

*Bang!*

Blanc knocks down the large metal door with one heavy punch. Right now I'm just glad she's on my side in this fight. Otherwise I'd really be screwed.

Looking into the dark room, so far nothing apparent is showing up. If anything, it's just an empty room. Maybe someone else got to the boss first. I wasn't playing for a while after all.

The various torches lining the walls light up one by one. Once the room is lit up, standing in the center is a decorative suit of armor.

The metal is black with gold details on the whole suit. The left arm holds a shield of the same color as the rest of the armor. Both hands grasp a sword that's black as well. The blade is long, but has a fan shape on the end of this.

"Who would abandon a nice looking armor set like that?" Neptune asks.

"That's the boss! Stand guard everyone." Vert orders us.

The armor set moves its head up to stare at us. It raises both of its hands and holds its sword up. Afterwards it gets into a battle stance with the shield guard its front.

"Alright comrades… time to see what this thing is made of."

"I couldn't agree with you more tits for brains."

"Am I the only one who thinks we're out of our league?" I do think that a little Martin. However we have the girls who make the impossible possible. I'm pretty sure we can take them.

Drawing my sword and pointing it at our opponent, I let out a battle cry.

"Chaaarge!"

"Argh!" It lets out a battle cry of its own, but doesn't move at all.

The party I'm in runs towards the giant. And get ready for the battle at hand.

A/N: I'm going to go ahead and apologize. I wanted this chapter to come out a few days ago. However my week has been busy.

And not once has anyone mentioned that sexy tenor saxophone in the band. But this is to be expected, people just like the alto more I guess.

But that's beside the point. To be honest, I wasn't feeling the flow of creative juices when I had free time and I wanted to write. Then I thought of the readers, the people who make writing a little better.

Thank you for being here, and continue to read on. I guarantee you won't be disappointed with how the story goes from here.

To make this note even longer, I want everyone to ask me one question in the reviews. I'll answer them just so long as it doesn't spoil any of the fun. But I'm sure no one reads the authors note anyway so it's all good.

See you in the next update I guess.