Chapter 49- Veiled Agendas

The skinny rogue went by the name of Slick Mick and he started this game with a few thuggish friends thinking about making some easy cash.

The group of friends weren't hardcore criminals by any means, they were just a group of bullies that were too cowardly to get their hands dirty and too lazy to work hard for an honest paycheck.

Their "boss" was the only one among them that came from a relatively well background and had his own pod.

In comparison to them, the boss was loaded, a super-rich guy. But in reality, his family background was middle-class. He was simply pampered by his father since the binary eclipse had claimed the lives of his wife and 2 of his children, leaving him with his only son.

His father worked as a senior technician in a middle-sized company in Orienta. It was unfortunate that his excessive pampering of his only kin resulted in a lazy young man that used his smarts in the wrong way.

It was this boss's idea to go into the world of Faeron. Since stealing stuff in reality was so hard due to the government Sentinels, why don't they rob and kill in the newest and most open game to come into existence since the creation of the virtual world.

They could make some real easy cash that way and better yet, it didn't go against any coalition laws.

They wouldn't be branded as criminals or red-named like in other games. So long as they carry out their robberies outside the city walls then no one would know about their wrong doing.

So long as they picked the right targets then they could make a killing… in more ways than one.

The hooligans the boss hung around with obviously couldn't afford NeuroNex pods themselves so they scrounged up the money for the gaming subscription and made use of one of the local gaming lounges in their city.

They were just like the other Virtual Lounges but instead of offering movie streaming services through specialized pods, they catered to the gamers. They could be rented at different rates depending on the duration and they even offered monthly subscriptions where they could gain usage for a certain number of hours every month.

At first, they planned on starting out in a more player-rich area but eventually, they decided against it.

The game had already been out for a week and they would lag behind the majority of the players in those regions so they picked the relatively remote Verdia Kingdom after mulling it over.

The first few days in-game had been spent learning their chosen combat skill in the training citadel and the following 2 weeks were spent leveling up their own levels.

If they wanted to rob and kill then they'd need to have the strength to overpower the players around them. Although the group had barely reached level 10 in the past 2 weeks, they couldn't hold on any longer and decided to act out on their plans.

Aside from their boss, the group of thugs couldn't afford the expenditure and had to start making some money.

They would case out some players in the city, marking out the easy targets and then follow them outside before robbing them blind. If they refused to pay up then they'd simply kill them and sell off whatever equipment they had when they died.

They figured they could continue doing this for another couple of weeks before they built up sufficient notoriety in the area. By then, they'd have made some money and reached a satisfactory level to go to another city and start over.

When his boss heard about Coinweaver constantly selling Rat Poison, he quickly figured out the merchant couldn't possibly be behind the killing of the monsters and merely had a source for Rat Meat. This meant there had to be an area or dungeon nearby that held an abundance of these monsters.

If he could find this source and claim it for himself, then he'd have gold coins raining down on him every day. He quickly thought of a way to track it down through the merchant and hopefully get the location of the place from the players when they robbed them blind.

Slick Mick was surprised to find a single player instead of a party dealing with the merchant but he thought this latest mark would be the same as all the other hapless players that chose to play solo, dreaming of making it big in Faeron.

Everything was going great at the start and just as their boss planned, they tracked the merchant down to the place where he met his contact. Unfortunately, when they followed the merchants supposed source out of the house and into a shop in the next district over, everything started spiraling out of control.

After the death of his muscular friend, the skinny man had run back to his boss and told him about what happened when they followed the cloaked figure. His boss was undoubtedly angry at the muscular mans death.

Not only was the man restricted from entering for a full day but he had also dropped a level! He couldn't control himself and spat out a slew of curse words at the rogue.

After calming down, he tried asking for more details about this mysterious cloaked man. Slick Mick had thought long and hard but unfortunately, other than the black cloak and the sword scabbard peering out of his cloak, he wasn't able to make out anything else.

In the end, the boss decided to case out the area with his men in case they saw the cloaked man leave but after a couple of hours, all they saw was the merchant enter the shop and then leave 5 minutes later.

"Boss I'm sure he's inside right now. That little merchant wouldn't have come here if his partner wasn't inside."

"I don't think it's that simple."

The archer spoke up when he heard the Slick Mick's words.

"Of course its not simple. How else would Grimfist die so easily if that place isn't covered in traps."

"Then why are you speaking so simply. As if we'd find him if we go inside."

"Go and try opening that door then, damn it just because I chose to play as a thief doesn't mean I'm good at sneaking in to places."

"Shut up you two!"

The "boss" finally couldn't take the squabbling going on around him and told both men to shut it.

"Let's go inside and check. If its empty then he can obviously enter and exit from a different way."

The three men stepped inside and just as they expected, the dusty old shop was empty.

Slick Mick eyed the backdoor with a trace of fear and looked away quickly. It was as though the door would grow a pair of arms and strangle him if he kept looking any longer.

"Let's leave."

Once the three stepped outside, their leader thought for a minute before coming to a decision.

"I want you two to case out the area. It's unlikely for this guy to come out through the shop's entrance, so I want you to go to the opposite street and stake it out in turn. When one of you logs off I want the other to be here. Once Grimfist can log back on I'll have him join you."

"But boss, how are we supposed to level and rob others if we stick around here all day…"

"I doubt he'll stay cooped up inside all day long. He has to step out and go to the dungeon. Once you spot him, you send me a whisper."

"What if he comes out dressed differently?"

The archer asked a good question that stumped their boss.

He hadn't thought of the guy coming out in different clothes and equipment. After thinking about what Slick Mick told him, he thought of an answer to their predicament.

"Keep an eye out for that sword he had. Even if he changed his clothes, his sword should stay the same. You said it was a plain looking scabbard with a boring hilt. If you see a guy walking out of the building with such a sword, then it has to be him."

He paused for a moment when he saw the reluctance on the faces of his men and finally said,

"We'll case it out for a day at most. If we still can't find him, then we drop it and look for another mark."

Both men were relieved they wouldn't be stuck on such a boring duty when there were plenty of other opportunities all around them.

**********

Abel was currently hammering away, attempting to make a new dagger. He was oblivious to the schemes taking place against him. Nevertheless, he was bound to eventually find out if only due to their terrible clandestine skills.

Right now, he was concentrating on lightly hammering the new daggers tang into the pommel. He had just finished his first attempt at forging the Rat-Tooth Dagger.

It was a very different design from the boring Iron Dagger blueprint he had purchased. Other than using up an ingot of Nocturnium, it also required 2 Stone-toothed Rat Teeth in its craft.

The monster part would be placed onto the ingot after the tapering process and further refined during the subsequent quenching and tempering stages.

He took a look at the final product, although it looked identical to the dagger he had behind his back, he wasn't sure if it would have the same stats until he checked.

"Inspect"

*Ding*

[Rat-tooth Dagger]

Attack: 25-27

+7% attack speed

Durability: 25/25

Requirements: Level 5

Description: A dagger made out of special materials for increased attack speed. Adequately forged by Xiang but the rare metal does not fully align with the other material.

'It has the same attack and level requirement but the bonus to attack speed and durability are lower'

He took a peek at his forging skill and saw it go up by 2.6% reaching 68.1% of Trainee. It was only slightly more experience gain then a single Iron Dagger but it was much better than ingot creation.

He had slightly messed up during the tempering stage as it was difficult to deal with a brand-new metal he had never worked with before. Although the blueprint helped with timely prompts, it wasn't a perfect result. The added complexity of having the Rat Teeth refined with the blade was another reason for the mistakes he made.

'Still, its not too bad of a result. I'm sure I can eventually reach the theoretical perfect level with a few more attempts. I should be able to make another 3 or 4 tries before I log off.'

After resting for a few minutes and pulling up his stamina and mana points, he got right back to forging the second dagger.

He promised himself he'd get a perfect result by the time he needed to log off!