Chapter 7

Circular Investigation

Hannah lay on the slanting roof of one of the tallest towers inside the Magician's Guild Compound, watching the stars in hope of finding a sliver of peace. She had hoped to rest her weary mind by playing the game, but to her dismay it hadn't been much of a distraction from her currently too real life.

A few hours earlier, right after she had logged in, she had gone down into the sewers to investigate the third floor down. And she had found nothing but that large black cap-stone, covering any way down to the lower floors; there wasn't even any creatures to kill. She had even had the thought of trying to dig down to the lower floor by pulling up the floor-stones in one of the corridors, but she hadn't even been able to put a scratch on the stones, much less pry them loose.

After the disappointing exploration of the underground structure, Hannah had gone to look at two of the three places she had been told contained secrets of the Magician's Guild. The first place was a large room with large open windows, inside the room were rows upon rows of benches with an aisle separating the room in the middle. At the very front of the benches were a raised platform and large blackboards. It looked very much like any regular hall of learning, and after running around looking everywhere for almost half an hour she couldn't figure out what was special about it. Maybe she had to go there during the day when people were there.

The second place was a lot more interesting; she just couldn't investigate the place to her satisfaction. When night had truly arrived, she had gone over the roofs and come to a large robustly built stone structure with window-slits so tiny that no person could go through them, even if the windows weren't barred by black iron rods every ten centimeters. When she looked in, she saw that the robust structure held a large room with a wall inset with a round metal door, indicating that the place was some kind of vault. In front of the round metal door stood two people clad in so much steel that she could only discern they were actually people and not statues from the slight movement one of them made after she had watched the place for almost ten minute. This room she had been told was where the Spellscrolls were kept, and she soon lost interest in looking at a locked vault she could never enter no matter how sneaky she tried to be.

Now she had gone back to where her spontaneous Quest had started with that man falling out of a window and dying. She figured that if she couldn't distract herself by doing things in game, she would just try and relax before going to the third place that could be of significance if she wanted to know more about the underground structure and how to enter the fourth floor and below.

Looking at the stars in this virtual reality hadn't had the effect Hannah had wished for though. All she could think of was how fatigued she felt from working 30 hours straight, having to go through those forty thousand pages of research data with her designated team of workers. She hated to go through data from a project that had failed as utterly as this one had. Over two hundred people had been scrapped and not a single one of the subjects had been even remotely successful in accordance to the experiment's goal. Each and every person that was part of the research-trials had gone completely insane without the ability to even discern who, what or where they were in the end. Memory tampering seemed to be more difficult than the researchers that started that project had first thought, or so it seemed to Hannah at least. The only other reason why the experiment failed was because the researchers didn't care about the failed experiment as long as they got some sort of result, no matter if it was successful or a failure. More data was always sought after, after all. She didn't know, and couldn't care.

When she thought about all those people that had been turned into biomass for the protein-factories, she always felt a strange kinship with them, for some unknown reason she likened their helplessness to her own. Even though all test-subjects had had the choice of either participating in an experiment or die because of their crimes, she was never made aware of what their crimes were, and it always felt strange that there was a constant supply of people willing to be test-subjects. But she had learned not to ask questions of her superiors; those that did, and asked the wrong question, had a tendency to disappear. And she really didn't want to disappear for something as stupid as asking questions. It only made her life a bit more suffocating knowing that there wasn't much freedom for her to live her life any other way than she currently did.

Sure, she didn't dislike her normal life—or she hadn't at least. After she had gotten this game, however, she had begun to understand what real freedom actually was. She had lived her whole life inside her part of the Satellite, and even when her mother had gone away to another satellite, she hadn't felt it was a lonely or barren existence, but now that she knew how monotonous her life was, she was starting to question if she wasn't very much like those people that had volunteered to be test-subjects for the various experiments that was conducted at her work. Sure, she had many privileges; when she got sick or had any medical complication, she was treated right away—she was even given the anti-aging medicine; and when she wanted a break from work, she could almost always have it, as long as it wasn't for a very long time; for the most part, she lived a life of complacent comfort. But if she was asked if she felt free, then she couldn't truly say so, and when she had to go through the data of a truly failed experiment where every participant were scrapped, then she felt her world closing in on her like she was trapped in some sort of prison.

She knew she should feel disgusted because so many people had died from the latest experiment, but usually only a few people died, and that couldn't be helped; the company she worked for had an illustrious record. Because of their practice of doing experiments on human subjects, they had cured cancer, cured many memory related diseases such as Alzheimers, and many mental disorders had been genetically eradicated by their works. So, they did do good, for the most part, it just felt bad reading about those experiments that failed completely.

The detachment from her feelings she had during work didn't help much either, since it was more or less impossible for her to forget the more extreme experiments she had sifted through for her superiors when she got off work and got her antitoxins to normalize her mental faculties.

This wasn't helping. She had to do something to think less about her real life; she wished she could just live inside the game instead of having to go back to work, but knew that was an impossibility. Standing up, realizing that looking at the stars just made her mind drift to places she didn't wish to go, Hannah jumped down from the roof onto a lower roof, then over to another roof, clinging to its side and pulling herself up. She was going to the last place she had to investigate to see if there was any information about how to enter the lower floors in the structure below ground, or at least if there was some information telling about what could be down there. She was going to go explore the library that only members of the Magician's Guild had access to.

Continuously using all her Mana through her Mana Manipulation, she sent out a cloud of darkness, shrouding herself in shadows. She had to be sneaky and not get caught when going around sneaking on the rooftops; it wouldn't do to be caught doing something she shouldn't be doing, now would it? Hannah ran, her soft nimble paws making almost no sound as she sped away from the tall tower and over the rooftops to a structure that looked a lot like a pyramid, only flatter, with a really wide base. It didn't look like much fun to run on top of this building, so she had never been here before.

It wasn't difficult to enter the building, however. Hannah lowered herself down from the side of the roof, looking in through a windows that was slightly open. Pushing the window open completely, she vaulted into the dimly lit room. She stood on a dark wooden walkway rounding a large room that seemed to take up almost the entire building; the room was filled with row upon row of tall stone bookcases filled with books. Every shelf had a strip of glowing glass at its front, illuminating the books' spines and the text on them that told what information each book held. It was quaint to actually see real books; she had never seen such things in real life—all she ever used when reading was the view-pads available everywhere.

Stealthily walking around the entire room once, Hannah soon realized that there was only one person in the entire building. At one wall sat a young man in a gray scholarly robe, his body slumped over a small desk in front of a door with a sign saying 'Authorized Personnel Only'. She figured this was the best place to investigate first—mostly because she didn't want to go through the tens of thousands of books neatly lined on the many four meter tall bookcases filling the entire room. It would take many days, if not weeks to read through all the books, even with her ability to read almost as fast as she could flip through the pages. She could just read every single book's spine, but that would also take a lot of time, and wouldn't really give her enough to prompt her Quest—or so she figured.

Jumping down the four meter drop from the walkway, she landed without a sound, nimbly rolling to displace her momentum. Her training in the tribe she started in really showed its worth during times like these. The youth that must be some sort of night-watch for the library didn't notice her even though she landed about twenty meters away from him.

Crouching down slightly, walking with her senses on alert, Hannah closed in on the youth guarding the door. To her surprise, the youth was dozing off, his shin in his hand, his head bobbing up and down in a drowsy manner as close to sleep as one could be while still sitting up. This is good, she thought to herself. The problem about going through the door behind the youth without being noticed was that there wasn't really any place she could actually hide for the last two meters all around the desk. It was a problem.

Crouching down to rest, she watched the youth, and almost came to the conclusion that she should just risk it and slide against the wall while covering herself in shadows. The only problem was that the shadows she produced with her Mana Manipulation only truly hid her well when she wasn't moving or whoever wanted to see her was off in a distance. So, she tossed that idea to the back of her mind and observed the youth some more, trying to think of something else to do.

She heard a squeak, and the youth roused himself, forcing her to quickly tuck back her head and shoulders behind the bookcase where she was hiding. Going down on her belly, lying on the floor, she slid her head out again, hoping the youth wouldn't think to look at the floor if he had been roused by the noise earlier. To her relief, the youth didn't seem to have woken at all, he still sat there almost sleeping, almost wakeful. It was troublesome. Maybe she should make some noise and see if the man would go investigate it?

That idea was better than just trying to sneak past him without any real plan if he truly was awake. So, she walked off a distance and pulled out a book with a finger, letting it fall, thudding to the ground, its deafening sound reverberating through the library's silence. That had been a bit too loud, no? She couldn't care about that now, though, so she ran away from the noise she had just created, sneaking back to another place close to where she could see if the youth would go look at whatever the noise was.

And she didn't have to wait for long. The groggy youth staggered between a row of bookcases, completely missing the one where she had dropped the book. “Hello? Anyone there?” the youth said with a hesitant voice.

Hannah rushed toward the door she wanted to go through, and soon arrived at the desk. Looking over her shoulder to see that she hadn't been noticed, she grabbed a hold of the door handle, pulling on the door to open it. And to her surprise, it actually opened. She had thought for a moment there that she would need to use her lock-picking Skill to open the locked door and would therefore be in a rush, but everything actually went better than she had thought.

She slipped through the barely opened door, closing it behind her as soon as she had gone through the gap. On the other side of the door she found a room barely ten meters wide and ten meters deep; from the ceiling hung a large sphere radiating a soft light. All the walls were lined with bookcases all the way to the ceiling, and in the middle of the room were four large tables made out of glass or crystal. Beneath the glass, in little compartments for each items lay books, scrolls, murals, stone tablets and a sheet of metal with words scratched on its surface. This looked more like something that could actually tell her something about what was beneath the Magician's Guild.

Going around the room first, she looked at every single book's spine, reading their titles to see if anything would be useful to read. And she found a few that piqued her interest with titles such as 'The Creation of Garam's Gorge', 'Legends of the Underworld', 'An Archaeological Study of the Greenmist County', 'The Archaeological Findings that Caused the Founding', 'The Guardians of the Magician Magistrate' and 'The Founding of Garam's Gorge Magician's Guild'. Hannah took all the books, putting them down on a glass table so she would be looking at the door to see if it opened. Then she began reading, quickly flipping through one book at a time, speed-reading to get a gist of their content quickly.

It didn't take many minutes for her to go through all the information in a book, and she soon summarized 'The Creation of Garam's Gorge' in her mind. It was about how the Dwarven Demigod Garam had fought against the Wraith of Pestilence, using a Life-sacrificing Skill or Spell that disintegrated his body to disperse the deadly mist covering several kilometers in all directions. During this last attack the Dwarven Demigod had also inadvertently cleaved a large rift in a mountain range, creating what was now known as Garam's Gorge. It was also why this place had gotten that name. From what Hannah read, however, much of what was written in the book was speculation from folktales told by Dwarves that lived in the mountains nearby. It didn't interest her much; the first book held no useful information.

'Legends of the Underworld' was much more interesting. It told of all sorts of dark and dangerous creatures that all lived deep below ground. It also told about how it was incredibly dangerous to try and venture into the domain of the Underworld. The rules of the world above could not be used in that dark place, and any adventurer that wanted to explore its depths should be lucky if they survived to come back to tell their tale. The most interesting things in the book were about the cities and cultures that supposedly existed below ground, and how its denizens would raid the world above at least once every century, causing havoc wherever an Emergence occurred. She really wanted to visit that place, but figured she needed to get a bit stronger before that, since the lowest Level creature the book told about was something called the Anonants and they were all Level 100 or more and went around in packs of several hundred ant-creatures at a time.

'An Archaeological Study of the Greenmist County' was about the town that had stood where Garam's Gorge Town now was. This book held some information about what she was looking for, or so she thought. The book told about how archaeologists from the Magician's Guild found remains that told a story about how at first the place later called Greenmist County had held a Fount of Life for all to use and was flourishing, but how the Fount of Life eventually turned into something that sprouted a deadly disease that covered the entirety of the County, killing all sentient beings except some strange Beastmen and creatures that were somehow immune to—or avoided by?—the deadly mists. After that, according to the archaeological findings, the mist covered the area for centuries, leaving the town to decay and ruin. It was very speculative too. There didn't seem to be much concrete factual information, but the underground structures beneath the Magician's Guild should be from that period of time, or so Hannah thought.

In the book 'The Archaeological Findings that Caused the Founding' she didn't find much new information, it only cataloged the physical findings that told the story inside the book 'An Archaeological Study of the Greenmist County'. The book also had some references about how dangerous the ruins below ground were and that none should go there without being prepared to die. It said things that made Hannah reluctant to actually explore beneath the Magician's Guild. Over a hundred people had gone missing during their first few explorations, and only a single person had come back from the fourth floor down.

'The Guardians of the Magician Magistrate' was the least interesting of the bunch. Hannah almost didn't read through the entire book. It listed names and dates of people Hannah could only assume were these so called Guardians of the Magician Magistrate, and a few lines about each person. Some of the names had dates of death, others did not. It was truly a waste of time to read.

When she at last came to the book 'The Founding of Garam's Gorge Magician's Guild' she thought she would find some useful information, but she didn't. It was a book about how the Magician's Guild built a large compound during their sixty years of exploration of the ruins below ground, and how at last their Guardian had sealed the fourth floor down because they had lost too many people to its depths. The only interesting thing Hannah found in the book was that there seemed to be information missing, as if you needed to have some knowledge she didn't have to understand the underlying meaning on some pages. It bothered her, but she couldn't do much about it.

Slightly disappointed about her findings, Hannah looked at the things below the glassy surface of each table. There wasn't anything that caught her eye though. She couldn't even read what most of the books said, the squiggly lines and geometrical shapes were no language she could understand—if the squiggles even were part of a language. She thought about breaking the glass and taking the things for a couple of seconds, but dismissed the thought as fast as it came; it wouldn't be worth the risk of stealing and being caught, especially since the items didn't seem to hold much value to her without a deeper understanding of their use and content.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much information that could tell her about how to unlock, dissolve or remove the sealing cap-stone that would open a passage down to the forth floor in the underground structure. The thing she had sought was not where she had hoped, and it put her in a slightly foul mood. Could it really be necessary to take that Slimy man that killed his brother by pushing him out a window and pressure him for information? Hannah didn't like that idea. Mostly because she played the game to have fun and explore, not to torment some NPC for information. The only recourse she had now was to go back to that tower and maybe sneak into Slimy's room to see if there was any information about how to break the cap-stone there.

When she came to the conclusion that there wasn't much more to learn from this room, Hannah put back all the books in their former places, trying to make it look exactly how it had before she entered the room. It wouldn't do if it was discovered that she had been in here without permission.

Cracking the door open by a sliver, Hannah looked out and saw that the youth had gone back to his seat, half-slumbering while trying to keep awake. She only had one idea—well, two, but killing him wasn't really an option—of how to get back outside the library without being spotted, and that was to somehow knock out the youth. This was where her training once again showed its usefulness. The Nightstalker Profession she had during the night had some truly useful Skills. As swiftly has she could, without making a noise, she opened the door and struck out at almost the exact time, hitting the youth at the back of his head, activating the 'Numbing Palm' Skill just before hitting him with enough force to knock him out, but not hurt him. And to her delight, the youth slumped, his head falling down with a thump as it hit the desktop. Success. Now, hopefully, the youth would just believe he fell asleep while sitting there and hit his head because of that.

Rushing by the now unconscious youth, she climbed up the nearest bookcase without disturbing the books and came up on top of it, using it as a runway to the walkway where the windows were. She would use the same way in as out, only because it was prudent to cover all her tracks. It had been an interesting infiltration, she had learned some useful things, but not much about how to get that cap-stone removed. Maybe she actually had to go to the Slimy man's room and take him hostage while pressuring him for information?

She looked at her Friend List, but Jay wasn't available; his name had actually turned yellow for some unknown reason, not the green that meant he was online, or the red that meant he was offline, but a yellow she had never seen before. Maybe it means he is out of range? She asked herself. Did the Contact Friend thingie have a range? She didn't know, and she had no way of getting an answer right now without logging out and looking it up on an info-site, especially since that wasn't worth her precious free time. She still had a lot of data to go through when she woke up the next day, and she really didn't want to do anything related to reality right now. This world was much better; she had even forgotten about the disturbing data she had to go through during her work-hours this week.

As she slipped out the open window, she closed it with her foot, positioning it close enough to its original position to not leave any discernible trace of her ever being here, and then pulled herself up on top of the roof. She was back outside, and nothing bad had happened. Now she just had to find a way to get into that vault she had found earlier, just to be completely certain she hadn't missed some way of opening the cap-stone. But she had no idea of how to do that, so she ran back to the tall tower she liked watching the sun rise and set from. When she arrived she lay down on the steeply slanting roof, her legs bent at the knees to prop her body up slightly and to keep her from not gliding down.

Unfortunately, idling here didn't feel relaxing at the moment, but she had no choice. She was going to wait for that Slimy to come back and listen in on him, maybe even take him hostage slightly for a little while, just to try and get the information she needed the fastest way she could think of. She didn't know if that was a really bad idea or just a slightly bad idea, though. She felt too tired to actually think straight.

She would just wait for Jay to be available again and ask what he thought she should do. He had had some good ideas of what to do, and she had done as he had asked and tried to find information on how to remove the Seal, but she couldn't find anything from her investigations. Maybe she had been searching in the wrong places? But she had gotten the information about the most valued and secret places inside this Magician's Guild from the Mercenary Guild, and their information was never wrong, so she didn't really think she had overlooked something she could actually gain access to.

Waiting for Jay's yellow name to turn green for almost thirty minutes, Hannah's patience was consumed completely. She was unable to get away from her disturbing thoughts now that she had nothing to do and not knowing what to do with her time anymore, and especially not feeling like fighting in the Arena, Hannah logged off the game. Knowing she would need the rest, wanting to escape from reality through the blissful ignorance of deep mindless slumber, she quickly fell asleep without even removing the datajack from the back of her neck or the computer-helmet on her head.