VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 123: Anomaly Detected
In the middle of the city there was a game store. A place that rarely anyone went to anymore after everything became downloadable online or through subscription services, so it was no surprise that this particular game store was run down and miserable looking.
As a matter of fact the games it sold had been sitting on its shelves for so long that they were practically considered antiques, but not in the valuable way a grandfather clock was. No, it was more antique in the way a rotary phone was.
Useless, outdated and surpassed by many new innovations that were far superior. After all even if this game store had the best new games, many of them paled in comparison to Dawd.
Even with its cruel and harsh features, it was still beloved by many. The cruelty only added to the realism, after all, and it was quickly gaining a lot of hype, even in the mainstream. In fact certain powers that be were already starting to arrange the first annual Tournament of Champions.
What was a game without a little extra competition, after all?
But while all of this was going on, and while this store might seem like it should have failed long ago, here it was. Clinging on to life by some miracle, or like a stubborn stain you just couldn’t get out.
Of course those who worked within the store could not care for its success or failure, for the store was just a convenient front.
While an automated, and outdated, android worked the front register and served all zero of the stores customers, two men were working hard in the backroom. They slaved away over various machines, pulling out wires and scanning through old tapes for anything they missed, as they repaired the damage caused by a simple ’accident.’
Who would have thought it could have caused so much?
These two men, one of them tall and well built and the other short and thin, were known by the nicknames of Boggis and Bunce respectively. Although the men themselves did not understand the origin of these nicknames
"Fixed it yet?" Boggis asked with a bored tone as he leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee as he scanned through the tapes from their surveillance.
His partner lifted his head from the work that he was actually doing and gave Boggis an irritated and incredulous look.
"Do you think I would still be doing this if I had? And what the hell are you doing drinking that stuff?! Haven’t you caused enough issues with that swill already?" Bunce gestured to his partners coffee with his screwdriver, but Boggis just waved him off in irritation.
"It was a freak accident," He said, taking another sip before placing it just on the edge of the table, "It would never happen again. So just cool your jets and..." His sentence trailed off as he frowned slightly.
He sat up quickly, rewinding the tape he had been idly watching before playing it again, then doing so a few more times.
"And what? Go on, finish it. Finish your sentence and-"
"Man shut up a second, come here and look at this." Boggis interrupted, waving his partner over. Bunce sighed, climbing out of the truck that was filled with half repaired machinery and sauntered over to his partner.
He watched the video with a raised eyebrow, before shrugging and sighing.
"I don’t get it... What am I supposed to be seeing? She talks to the robot, that’s not that weird. I know a guy who got married to one, now that is weird."
"No no, not the robot. Look there, look at the food." Boggis insisted, playing the video over again and again. It was a ten second loop of the girl waving around the food, placing it down and wheeling away.
Bunce couldn’t understand what he was supposed to be seeing until, on the third re-watch he finally noticed it. There was a small glitch in the camera, which was nothing unusual as this equipment was intentionally old and unfortunately came with some bugs.
But it was the glitch that was the focus, or more importantly, the differences before and after. One second the food was there, and the next after the glitch, half of it was gone. Something had eaten it in the span of a second. Something that their camera did not pick up on. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
The two men shared a knowing glance before Bunce rushed over to the van and hopped back inside. He pulled out the laptop, quickly typed his message and sent it away through heavily encrypted channels.
The message was simple.
//Subject B-017. Anomaly Detected.//
***
Wheeling herself around, since her body refused to give her the satisfaction of being able to walk again, Valerie made herself some breakfast and then quickly stopped herself in front of her computer.
She instantly opened the forums and started to scroll. She ignored the posts of idiots talking about World Bosses or which NPC leaders were the hottest and instead focused on finding any posts referring to headaches.
Even after an hour of searching, she found absolutely nothing. Not a single peep, which was good for her timeline, but didn’t cement it. Not everyone was going to share such an innocuous thing, and if people had figured it out like she had, they were definitely not going to share it.
Valerie considered telling her friends about it, but after remembering that creep, she decided again it. Before anything, she needed to be able to defend herself. Which meant magic studies were in order.
With her timeline confirmed, Valerie cleared her schedule and quickly logged herself into Dawd.
The world felt... different this time. More alive, as she realised the heavy implications of what she had discovered. But, even with the weight of certain lives on her conscience, she couldn’t afford to distract herself.
Belladonna rushed out of the Inn, her feet slamming against the ground with extra strength and a little bit of anger, as she practically flew through the streets and found herself at the Tower of Mystica.
She pushed open the door, using the ambient mana in the air to enter the first floor, and hurried over to the receptionist’s desk as fast as she was allowed to. She had a particular reason for using this floor.
"Hello there," She said with a slightly strained smile, "Do you have books made for beginner mages to learn from?"
