Chapter 99 - The Vampire's Crypt - V

After absorbing the knowledge, Merlin reached for a handful of the loose sheets that were laying around at his feet. He attempted to read what was on the page, it seemed that the beginner knowledge was enough to understand the context, but there were a several words that most likely expanded the story into greater detail that he simply couldn't understand.

The general context he managed to figure out was that the vampire had one day suddenly found himself lost and alone in the forest. There was a specific passage that mentioned that this was a strange world where contact with sunlight caused the vampire's skin to burn.

Merlin believed this passage confirmed his theory that something strange and unusual was going on. The reason the vampire seemed out of place was because it actually was. The vampire had seemingly been taken from another world, or dimension, and plopped into this one without warning.

Most of the other sheets on this table spoke about its attempts at creating allies. It seemed as though the vampire's usual methods weren't working the same way as he expected. So the vampire discovered an abandoned building and began rigorous testing on any native life forms it could find.

It seemed to be testing on animals at first, bats and rats being the most common, but also the occasional wolf. It then quickly expanded out to humans once it discovered the nearby trade route.

It seemed the first task was to create the vampire's kin through various unconventional methods, which coincidentally led to the development of ravenous ghouls. It seemed the first few test subjects were a lost cause but eventually the vampire discovered a method to create other vampires, sort of.

It seemed these vampires were no better than ghouls at first, but subsequent attempts resulted in a more stable creature. They couldn't communicate but they were able to obey simple instructions, and the biggest bonus of all was that they didn't burn up in the sun.

Merlin grabbed a stack of sheets and made his way over to the other desk, the one that had several vials full of strange looking liquids. This desk also had various documents, although they were stacked neatly in a pile. 

Merlin placed the various loose sheets of paper down on the desk, and picked a few sheets from the pile. He attempted to read them, but he found it near impossible. Most of the documents were almost incomprehensible, they were riddled with endless jargon and eccentric reports of testing.

By this point everyone else had finally healed, Merlin could hear their pained groans as they started standing back up.

"Is everyone alright?" Zankoku asked, to which he received a variety of answers. The person in the worst shape seemed to be Nora, who appeared shaken up by what had just happened. Then Zankoku turned to Merlin, who was still reading through paper. "What about you Merlin, you doing ok?"

Merlin turned away from his attempts at reading, he turned to face Zankoku, but found that it was a little inconvenient to turn his head.

"A little stiff around the neck, but I'm fine otherwise." He said while cracking his neck. "What kind of guy throws someone by the head anyway? That sucked."

He received a couple chuckles in response, but it seemed everyone was low on energy at the moment.

"So, you've been reading for a couple minutes, have you figured out anything interesting?" Zankoku asked, to which Merlin briefly explained the story he had put together about the vampire's life.

"Wait, so vampires aren't normally in this world?" Alvira asked with a disappointed tone.

"There are still vampires, don't worry." Merlin reassured her. He didn't know how much he could reveal without seeming suspicious, but he came up with an easy explanation, so he briefly told them where to go. "There are vampires and other undead north-west of Caphyae. Although you're going to need a lot more levels before you try it."

"How do you know that?" A few people in the group asked.

"I played this game briefly during the closed alpha and testing stage. Most of the undead were put in the same area, and it doesn't seem like much has changed from then and now so they're most likely still up there." Merlin explained.

It wasn't a lie, although he could barely remember much from the alpha test aside from the final demo. And he only remembered the final demo because it was the day of the incident that sent him to the medical bay a few days before his exams.

"That explains the fancy machine." Alvira mumbled out loud, she seemed convinced. "And everything else, really." 

The rest of the group nodded, they seemed satisfied, like they solved a mystery that had them scratching their heads.

"So this is why you're always first on the leaderboard?" Alvira asked. "You've played all of this before."

"Well, I haven't done any of the quests before. The story is new to me." Merlin tried explaining in such a way that he wasn't accused of cheating. "The alpha test was just everyone messing around on an admin account and testing a bunch of features out like casting magic or interacting with things."

"All I really did during the beta was play with magic and try learn how to do a flip." Merlin continued downplaying it, "So it's probably just that I had more experience moving around and doing things at first, and that eventually snowballed into me taking the top spot."

"What about Snow and scythe guy?" Alvira asked, she seemed to be a bit disheartened hearing that Merlin had an obvious advantage, even though he tried to minimise it as much as possible while explaining it. "Were they in the alpha too?"

"No, no. The alpha was just the developers, I was only invited to play around a couple times because of family reasons." Merlin continued trying to downplay it. "Rather, those two are surprisingly good at this. It took me a while before I figured out how to do things, but those two are naturals."

Alvira seemed content with Merlin's answer, but he couldn't help but think he went the wrong way about it now. Even if they were better behaved than the others, they were still part of the upper class and members of famous families. Those kinds of people were famous for being especially bad when it came to their inferiority complexes.

"Well, I think we should start breaking these people out." Merlin changed the subject, "There is probably a set of keys around somewhere for these cages, along with other loot."

The group started searching around, there was a couple weapons laying around and a few trinkets, but nothing Merlin could really use or wanted. A couple of the vials of strange liquids glowed faintly, indicating that they were lootable, but nobody wanted to touch them because they looked dangerous, so Merlin decided he'd take them. Unfortunately, similar to the last vial of strange liquid he looted, the information on it was hidden and required an appraisal skill.

The group eventually found a ring of keys for the cages. The keys were hidden in the pile of dust and were only found once Nora broke her eerie silence and began angrily kicking the dust around. She seemed to be in better shape after expelling her frustrations, but she still didn't talk much.

With the keys in hand, Merlin started unlocking all the cages that had people in them. They were all still a delirious state, and it was likely that they would snap out of it eventually.

Zankoku somehow got the bright idea that slapping an NPC would wake them up, similar to how Merlin told them to slap Nora. But he was met with nothing but a light reduction in karma.

Eventually all the cages were unlocked, and the group slowly helped them out of the building one by one, laying them on the forest floor outside the abandoned church.

Once Merlin carried the last captive out of the building, he received several notification messages.

「You have solved an issue caused by a strange phenomenon.」

「The quest "The Caphyae Kidnappings." has been updated.」

"A strange phenomenon." Merlin mumbled those words out loud. It seemed familiar, and then it clicked, the shattered sky quest had a similar wording.

He wasn't completely certain if this was related to that quest, but it made sense to him. It did warn that it would increase the possibility of strange phenomenon happening around him, but he wasn't entirely sure what that meant. 

Merlin started casting cleanse on the entire party while they spoke about what to do next. Eventually the NPCs started snapping out of their drug-fuelled haze and slowly regained the ability to think. A lot of the NPCs seemed terrified, but calmed down when reassured that they were safe.

One of the NPCs, a frail looking woman, was frantically searching around while screaming out what Merlin assumed was a woman's name. After scanning every face crowded around, the NPC approached Merlin's party. She started asking questions about her sister, saying that perhaps they missed someone and began screaming out descriptions.

Everyone slowly realised who she was talking about, Merlin decided that he was going to be the one to go back into the crypt. He came back up a few minutes later with the pale corpse of a woman in his arms, and a thick stack of rolled up paper in his hand.

When the woman saw the corpse Merlin was carrying, she broke down in tears. Merlin gently placed the corpse on the forest floor, and the woman fell to her knees beside it. Everyone stood around silently as the woman cried.. She held her sister's lifeless body tightly in her arms.