Chapter 27: [Figuring things out]
"So. Do you feel anything?" I asked curiously.
"What are these memories?" Holding his head to keep the pain at bay, Encerid took a deep breath before concentrating back on me. Initially, there was confusion in his eyes, but as the jumbled memories began overlapping in his mind, I could see his eyes shining brighter.
"Are these memories from the future me? Wait! There was some overlap of previous memories. So, is it like memories from an alternate reality?!"
While looking at his excited face was entertaining enough, there were things far more interesting that I had taken notice of.
The Primordials.
They were not appearing-
-BOOOM!!!!
"Ha! Fuck!" I cursed out loud before looking outside the window at the brown-haired Primordial, having the same expression as last time.
"Annoying," I mumbled before reloading the whole thing once again.
[Loading Save Point!]
"Brown Primordial for the players, huh?" I exhaled before suddenly recalling the fact that those fuckers could listen to me as well. In fact, those creeps might be eavesdropping on every single word of mine right now with interest.
I should be careful about what I share.
[Loading Save Point!]
So once again.
Brown Primordial for the Players.
That leaves one more Primordial that I haven’t met yet. Not that I am too fascinated to meet him anytime soon.
"All right. Then let’s just get to work," I stretched before beginning to run toward Northern City once again.
Running towards that place, I began pondering the whole thing once again.
According to Encerid, the answer to this whole situation lies within the city itself. Which means that as long as I can figure out what is wrong with it, and interpret anything unusual within the city, I should be able to find a clue regarding the missing players.
But since I cannot share the memories directly or indirectly, I needed to write them all out on paper before presenting them to Encerid. The notes also need to be concise so that he won’t take much time to read, but also be detailed enough to not miss anything important.
Meanwhile, I should also search for things on my own and not totally become dependent on Encerid. While he is a sharp kid, this whole thing is probably more complicated than what an average player can handle. Getting help is fine, but being totally dependent on his way won’t be.
Let’s do it alternately. One attempt by myself, and the next following Encerid’s plan.
With that in mind, I decided this particular attempt to be following Encerid’s plan. That is, to find out about the citizens and notice if there is anything wrong with them. One at a time until I complete my investigation of everyone.
It would be cruel to leave Encerid to get kidnapped once again, but until I can figure out how it is happening, I doubt I could do anything about it. Hence, ignoring Encerid completely, I began investigating everyone within the city as much as I could.
Whether it was a beggar or a noble, it did not matter. I talked with the guards, the nuns, the children, the elderly, everyone who had lived in the city. I started learning about their lives as much as possible.
It wasn’t possible with this return, which barely had more than a few hours to work with, especially this particular one, so I regressed to a different [Save Point] to the time before the players had arrived. It was about a month before Encerid had been kidnapped, so it provided me with ample time to look into the residents of the city.
Still, it took time...
Quite a lot, really.
Sometimes, I had to repeat the same thing for a few months before I could find a way to get a favourable opinion from the residents before I could start the investigation, other times, people readily shared their knowledge on how their life came to be.
Funnily enough, it wasn’t boring at all.
To get to know the stories of everyone present in the city was a fun experience. Not just fun, though.
It made me sad when I found how the beggar was once a rich man whose son took everything from him. Or how the kind lady who sold newspapers had run away from home because her parents were trying to sell her for a few silvers.
How the children were sometimes more mature than the elders, and how the nicest priest was actually a con artist trying to make a living with what he had.
It was a... normal, thriving fantasy city with its own backstory and culture.
Though despite all that effort, there wasn’t a single thing that connected with the whole player scenario.
In fact, no matter how many times I returned, the players were getting kidnapped by teleportation one by one, in the same manner. The player, [Cray] was always the first one, no matter what I did, and following a general pattern, it always ended on [TruthSeeker], that is Encerid.
Trying to talk to the players or intervening with them did not produce any fruitful results either. Just like Encerid, even if I were to take a player a 1000 miles away from the area, he would still be teleported at the same time as he was predetermined to be done so.
And what’s even worse was the fact that, even if I stopped any of the players from logging into this game on that particular day.... their consciousness still somehow logged in even without a helmet....
It was rather horrifying.
Really.
So the least I could do was to calculate the timing of their arrival into the game, the things that they did in the game, and the moment they had been teleported into that Doctor’s lab. And perhaps trying to find any pattern among the things that have happened.
It was a bit tedious work, but well, it too finished after sometime as I recollected the whole thing and moved to find Encerid. Not the ’Encerid’ that I had met at the end of this madness, but the one who would be joining in the game for the first time.
Hopefully, it won’t take too long to convince him.
I mumbled before looking at the thick book of notes, at least 500 pages long, that I had made, carrying all the important information that I could collect about the city and its citizens. Even though I tried to keep it as concise as possible...
Overdid it, didn’t I?
Perhaps if these notes were thinner, I could have just met the Encerid from one month into the future, but I doubt he could read all of this information within a single hour. Hence, here we are meeting the ’currently joining’ Encerid for now.
"Even if it doesn’t work immediately, I could just leave the whole notes with him while preparing to do my own research in my own way. That way the amount of time wasted would be majorly reduced, making it easier to make it a two-way research where both of us are doing our own thing," I mumbled as I looked at the similar silhouette forming in front of me.