Crystal Hunt

"Now that I look at this lake, it's really beautiful with all these lights shining from beneath and above, reflecting and fracturing in the water.", I gaze at the water, then suddenly clap my cheeks to wake out of my trance, 'But I have no time for that, I need to find a way out, I don't even have any food!'

I take a closer look at the crystals, some of them just have a faint glow, while others are far brighter, also there doesn't seem to be a specific color dominance, the colors are just a random mess. The lake seems surprisingly deep, about 10 to 20 meters around the edge the water isn't that deep, average between 2-5 meters, in this area are most of the crystals that have fallen.

But after the 20-meter line is just plain darkness, I guess the shallow ground quickly falls off into this abyss.

I try to see anything in the darker parts of the lake, but then a little detail catches my eye, 'Why are there little waves? Inside a cave is no wind that could disturb the surface and the little drips from some of the stalactites are not enough to make such relatively big waves!'

"Unless there is something else disturbing the water"

A shudder roll down my spine, I now don't look at the lake with amazement anymore, but with concern, 'Who knows what lurks deep beneath the surface?'.

'Sh*t I really don't wanna go in there...', almost certain it'll be just a waste of time my gaze wanders through the cave, desperate to find just one crystal or something else that'll help me out of here.

The cave is huge, the ceiling is high above and the crystals are hanging directly over the lake, and with the lake lying right in the middle of the cave, there is no way I could climb up there, even if my body wasn't this weak! There are also a few very dark protrusions, I am almost certain, that these are passages leading to other caves, but I can't know for sure.

After what feels like a solid hour of procrastination. Finally, I decide to bite the bullet, or I'll be stranded in here forever.

'I could try to walk through the passages completely blind in hope I'll stumble my way out of this hell hole, but there are way too many risks! Even if I really don't want to, I have no choice.'

Having made up my mind I stride towards the edge of the lake, while constantly looking at the deep abyss I bend down and lay down Tachi with care to not make unnecessary noise. Then I stand up and dip a toe in the water, all the while staring at the abyss not even daring to bat an eyelid.

"Col-" I immediately put my hands before my mouth muffling my shriek of surprise, in resentment of my stupidity but also now on guard I take a step to get this over with and wade through the water till I can't stand anymore and need to swim. The cold water stings on my skin and quickly leads to me shuddering, on top of that my body is currently way too weak to swim for more than a few minutes.

'Seems like I have to take the smaller ones at first, the larger ones look way too heavy!'

I search my immediate surrounding for small but strong glowing crystals, actually smaller crystals are not necessarily dimmer than larger ones, but I noticed there are far more bright larger crystals than smaller ones. 'Ha there!', I quickly notice a particularly small but bright crystal just on the edge to the abyss, 'This one would be perfect! It's so small I could easily attach it to Tachi or something else, but it's also really near to the abyss! But I really want it, it's even brighter than most of the really large crystals.'

I contemplate for a while, weighing the risks against the benefits and decide, 'F*ck it let's do it, I would be much more mobile with this little guy. But if anything goes wrong, I'll take another one of the smaller ones with me.' I take another glance at my surroundings and discover a crystal about four times the size of the one before just glowing a minute amount dimmer, 'The size is not ideal, but it's bearable'.

'Wish me luck Tachi!'

<Hmmm? Oh, yeah good luck Mastaaa~ *yawn*>

'I don't even know why said that and stop calling me Master!', I direct the last parts of my thoughts to Tachi as a message and take the plunge into the deeper parts of the 20-meter radius. When I start swimming for the first time I really feel how weak I have gotten, it's like I lay in a gravity less environment for a while and did no training to counter the muscle-mass-reduction.

<Zzz...>

As I reach the first crystal I already feel fairly spent and that was only about 7 meters! But it was worth it, I have acquired the slightly bigger crystal, 'It's even more beautiful from up close!'. I quickly reign in my thought, 'No time to admire this beauty, I need to get out of here asap!', therefore I immediately make my way to the main objective.

--|Sids (Ziekls) Pov|--

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-Inside Sids room

'I really don't know where Gens consciousness is', I searched inside Counter Attack for about twenty hours now! Even the admins can't help me, they actually never had someone dying inside one of the pods, so they are new to this whole thing too. They just said that we should be able to track him down with their tools, but for all they know he's not in-game, 'Even weirder is, that the logs have information about him being uploaded but then just disappearing. It's almost as if somebody messed with the logs!'

After thinking for a bit,'Could it be, that what I saw in GOS, that guy in a suit, was real and is somehow involved with this whole mess? But he should have shown up on the cameras!'

"I need to find answers even if I have to use 'that guy'", I grimace to just even think about accepting his help, I quickly shake my head, 'I have no time to resent about this 'guy', the life of my friend is on the line! Let's first go to GOS again, maybe someone has seen the suit-guy too.'

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-GOS, the security department

"I need the video footage of yesterday from 14:07 to 16:34!"

The manager of the security department is standing in front of me, he has a balding head with just a few neatly brushed strands remaining. His uniform is hanging sloppily from his body and he looks like he hasn't seen a bed in a few days.

"And what makes a brat like you think, that we would give you these files? Just leave me alone and scram!"

"I think I overheard that security doesn't get paid that good these days anymore.", I whisper in his ear, "How about 10.000c?".

"10-10-thousand?!", he begins stuttering and lets out a high pitched shriek, then looks around to make sure nobody overhears our conversation, but all the employees in here are far too overworked to even realize what is going on. It really is weird that GOS relies on humans to do these kinds of jobs, AIs are far more effective and cost-efficient.

He then proceeds to grab my arm and yanks me into his office, "What are you planning to do with the footage?".

I reply truthfully, "You know what happened yesterday with one of these VR Pods and one of its occupants?", he nods, "Well, I am that guys friend and I was with him yesterday, you can check it on the recordings if you want. I just need these recordings to check the people that were in the area and want to ask them some questions if they have seen something weird."

As soon as I revealed, that I have no malicious intend he sighs in relief and doesn't even bother to check if I am speaking the truth, he only has eyes for the money.

"OK, OK, I'll give you the recording, but you need to make the transaction right now!"

"Fair enough.", I take out my phone, a completely transparent device, making 3D projections inside the glass possible. Then I open my account and send the money via face recognition.

"Ha, there it is!", the man jumps up in his joy and then turns to me, "Take this and now scram! I need to quit this job!"

He then proceeds to push me out of his room.