Vivid Stars Online

Less than an hour later, I had a response from Linnea asking to meet at a local cafe. While many of them were closed because of resource shortages, some were still operating on a reduced menu to cater to those who lacked the faculties to cook for themselves.

Hoping this meant she was available to join me on a new expedition, I took the monorail over. I was soon entering the cafe and spotting Linnea in the corner, upon which I moved over to sit at the table.

“Hey, Linnea,“ I said as I slid into the booth across from her. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.”

Strangely, she looked confused for a moment, before her face cleared and she responded. “Oh, you must be Jared. Linnea’s told me all about your last adventure.”

Before I could do more than blink in surprise, someone else slid into the booth across from me. For a moment I couldn’t understand what I was seeing as another Linnea sat across from me, then I realized what had to be happening.

“I didn’t realize that your sister would be joining us,” I said as I turned to the real Linnea. I wasn’t exactly annoyed, it just would have been nice to know in advance. It would have saved me the confusion, at least.

“Sorry, sorry,“ she responded, waving a hand as she spoke. “I meant to meet you as you arrived and explain the situation, however you got here faster than I expected and I was still ordering.”

She smiled apologetically before continuing. “I’m happy to join you on another expedition with the same terms as last time, however, Elana has an offer for you as well.” She gestured at her nearly identical sister as she spoke.

Now that I was looking for them, I could see slight differences between the two of them. Linnea was a fraction taller with larger muscles, while Elana was more slender and had longer hair.

I was pulled from my observation as Elana spoke up. “Hi Jared, sorry for the confusion. I pushed Linnea to let me come because I wanted to ask if I could come with you two. For free, of course,“ she continued hurriedly, “I’m in it for the XP, not for money.”

Linnea must have noticed my confusion, as she jumped in a moment later. “Elana’s an Engineer,“ she said, gesturing to her sister as she did so. “As a non-combat class, she only gets one-quarter of the normal XP from killing Beasts.”

I could begin to see where this was going, so I spoke up. “Right, and I’m guessing that like most MMOs crafting things at lower levels loses you money?” It was a problem in many games, with so many people wanting to level their crafting skills, raw materials ended up costing more than the finished product.

“Yep,“ Elana replied, sighing as she did so. “While there aren’t too many other players to compete with here on Altheias, all the NPCs have streamlined factories to build things. The things I can make by hand have the advantage of being custom-built, but they always cost a lot more than the factory-made stuff.”

“While Linnea wouldn’t tell me the details,“ Elana continued with a slight glare at her sister, “I know you’re going after some old ruin from an advanced society. I’m hoping that working with whatever technology remains there will be a good source of XP.”

She paused after that, waiting to hear my response. While I hadn’t been expecting this, I wasn’t against it either. I’d been thinking about what we might encounter at the facility and one issue I’d come up with was that it might be locked down.

Having a tech person along who could access locked areas or even computers could be extremely useful. The only downside would be having someone else along that we had to protect. Linnea had mentioned that Elana had a non-combat class, I had to imagine that meant she wouldn’t be much help in a fight.

“OK,“ I said after thinking about it for a minute. “As long as you have your own supplies, I don’t see any issue with that."

Elana’s face broke out into a massive grin as she responded. “Thank you, I'll go get everything ready now.” Then she was shimmying past Linnea and out the door before I could say anything.

Linnea was also smiling, though she was a little more subdued than Elana. “Yes, thank you, Jared. She’s been having a lot of trouble leveling with the number of credits we’ve been able to invest. I know it’s been weighing on her, so it’s a relief to have a way forward.”

That was something I was happy to help with. I’d been so wrapped up in my own troubles I hadn’t even considered that other classes might have their own issues. While it was unfortunate for them, it was nice in a way to know that I hadn’t chosen the only difficult class.

“No worries," I replied with a smile. “I’m not one to turn down free help anyway and I’m sure that Elana will be very helpful when we get to the facility itself. We’ll just have to make sure she stays safe on the way there.”

I could tell from how she relaxed that I’d guessed correctly about Elana’s combat ability. Still, it seemed like a reasonable trade, a disadvantage on the initial trip in exchange for assistance at our destination.

Linnea nodded to me before replying. “Since it seems my sister has run out before eating, you're welcome to her meal. I don’t think she will be ready before tomorrow morning, so there shouldn’t be a rush for us to prepare.”

I was never one to turn down free food, so I agreed happily. We spent nearly an hour eating and chatting before we split up to make our own preparations.

I had quite a few preparations to make myself. First, I had to replace the gun that I had sadly lost during the fight with the Lake Beast. Even after the fight was complete, I hadn’t been able to retrieve it, lacking the ability to cut my way through its thick hide.

It was particularly a shame, since I was sure that the Grand Beast’s core would have been highly valuable if I’d been able to access to it. Still, there was nothing to do about it now, I would just have to spend even more money on gear.

This time I went with a level three gun, the MK 2 Light Plasma Pistol. It was nearly fifty percent more powerful than my last gun, a very significant upgrade. Unfortunately, it cost over three times as much at ten thousand credits. While I would have liked to go with the cheaper model, I knew things would only get more dangerous from here on.

The new gun required more expensive ammunition to keep the same number of shots on hand as well. It cost me eight thousand credits for four hundred shots compared to five thousand from last time.

If I hadn’t already affirmed my decision to go all in on the game, I’d have been freaking out at how much I was spending. As it was, the situation was simply concerning, I would run out of money eventually and it was going to be sooner at this rate. I hadn’t even sent Linnea her eight thousand one hundred credit down payment for the mission yet.

Sighing, I pulled more money into the game and sent the credits to her, wincing as my bank account dropped even further.

I wasn’t even done yet, either. After leaving the gun store, I moved on to the same outdoor gear supply store as last time. There, I refilled my rations and medical supplies for seven hundred credits, ensuring that I had twelve days of rations to be safe. I also purchase a set of warm outer clothes for the trip up the mountain.

These set me back four hundred credits for the good quality ones, however, I felt it was worth it. The last thing I needed was to get hypothermia on the trip. I sent a message to Linnea as well to make sure that she and her sister brought along similar clothing.

There was still more I would have liked to bring, however, by this point, my pack was truly full to bursting. I couldn’t possibly fit anything else in there, so I would have to make do with what I had.

Last, I sent a message to Brian, asking him to drop us off the next morning. Since I knew he wouldn’t fly within ten miles of the mountain, I asked him to drop us off at the clearing where I had fought the Great Bear.

It met his requirements of having been surveyed for a day and wasn’t too far off the route we were going to follow up the mountain. I didn’t have to wait long before I got a confirmation from him. It seemed he was eager as ever to get back into the air.

With no other direct preparations to make, I returned to the Explorers Guild and organized to stay another night there. Once that was set up I dumped my gear in the room and moved to one of their meeting rooms to take advantage of their larger screens.

If I was going to be exploring one of the planet’s ruins, it only made sense to learn the exact legalities of the situation first.

The next morning, I took the monorail to Brian’s landing pad, still thinking about what I’d learned the evening before. Luckily, exploring, and to be honest looting, Altheias’s ancient ruins were legal.

There were some restrictions, however. Firstly, all such ruins were automatically owned by the government once discovered and had to be reported as soon as possible. I had an inkling that was why the mysterious information broker who contacted me hadn’t explored it themselves.

As long as they never entered and ‘confirmed’ that it was an Arkathian ruin, then technically they weren’t required to report its location. I would have no such protection and would have to report the location as soon as I returned.

Secondly, we could only remove loose items from the ruins, specifically, the law defined it as any item whose original purpose included removal from the facility. This prevented us from dismantling anything and taking parts with us unless the original thing we were dismantling was itself intended to leave the facility.

Lastly, anything we removed could only be used by us personally or sold to the government. Private sales were not permitted. I was glad that I’d investigated as I would have undoubtedly got myself into trouble otherwise.

I arrived to find Brian prepped and ready to go, with Linnea and Elana both waiting in front of the aircraft. Elana had a pack nearly as large as mine, though hers had a flat metal top that housed some kind of drone.

Nodding at both of them, I confirmed they were ready to go before we all boarded the VTOL. This time we let Elana go in front, where she proceeded to ask just as many questions as Linnea had.

Hers were more focused on how the vehicle worked, showing an impressive understanding of engineering. Or at least I thought it was impressive, I certainly didn’t understand half of what they were discussing.

What was just as surprising was that Brian could answer her questions just as easily as he did Linnea’s. It seemed he knew just as much about how to maintain the aircraft as he did about flying it.

It only took an hour to get there, and I used the time to take a quick break in the real world. Once we arrived, Brian dropped us off just as swiftly as usual before returning to the city.

“OK,“ I said once he was gone. “It's fifteen miles that way,“ I guested off toward the mountains, “to where the route I was given starts. I figure we take it a little easy the first day and camp at the base when we get there. We can then tackle the climb in the morning.”

I very deliberately didn’t look at Elana when I suggested we take it easy. While I wanted to use the first day to make sure she was going to be able to keep up, I didn’t want to let her know that was what I was doing.

I could see Linnea mouthing a thank you at me though, it seemed that she at least had realized.

When there were no complaints, we set off. As usual, I led the way with my watch scanning for threats. I was sure combat was inevitable given our experiences before, though it shouldn’t be too tough before we started up the mountain.