Chapter 121: Coffee Talk, Part 2

[[I am pleased to inform everyone that I've also had a little talk with Cyberware Game Studio's very own Howard Phillips, the Head Designer, and Game Director for the critically acclaimed Action RPG - Chronicles of Asteria… I - ]]

Amanda's blog went on to list a series of accolades and praises that the big man has earned for himself. 

Reading through it, it was pretty apparent that she was quite a fan of his works by the way she was talking him up in her own words.

Line after line, paragraph after paragraph, took forever to actually get to the meat of what the blog was all about. When I pointed out the obvious bias to her, Amanda got all defensive and bashful, claiming all those praises and big talk about him was just her padding the word count. 

"He's not my type anyway," She muttered under her breath.

But in all honesty, if I didn't have the knowledge that I was reading a blog in the first place - I'd just immediately assume I was simply reading some doe-eyed gal's self-insert fanfic between her and some rando hunk of a developer. 

Certainly did read that way.

Amanda had the phone in her hand, so I couldn't really take over the wheel to speed things up… so there I was, huddled closely by her side, staring with great scrutiny at a smartphone clad in a glossy pink rubber case with its brightness set all the way to eye-scorching levels of blinding. 

Think I'm gonna need glasses after this is done.

"Ah! Here it is, 'Was there any cut content at all?', I asked… over here, this line here."

She guided my eyes through the jumble of words, latching them onto a small excerpt that seemed like almost any other, but sure enough, there it was, the start of a paper trail that'd hopefully lead to somewhere fruitful. 

Otherwise, this little reading session would have been quite a waste of coffee time.

Amanda went on to describe him as laughing light-heartedly with a rather endearing smile and a twinkle in his ocean-blue eyes as he explained that there was quite indeed a lot of content that ended up being left on the cutting room floor, yet there was not one that he more rued its omittance than the mechanic of Global Blightfall.

Just for a tease, I read aloud his words in an arrogantly pompous tone, my brows soaring higher and higher by the syllable, much to Amanda's dismay. 

"While I am very much content with the game we have made, three years of nothing but blood, sweat, and tears… I'd still say it's far from being the perfect product. Really, if you could have seen the things we had planned but never could implement - Blightfall, for example! Ahh, cut out last minute. That was gonna be a whole game-changer… but I suppose you're not interested in talking about that now, are you?"

What a question, that was. Was Amanda interested in knowing? I have no clue. Maybe the next three long pages after this one would be able to give me the answer to that mystery. Hmm, I wonder.

I turned to Amanda, who had turned a bright red in the face, attempting to hide her embarrassment by pretending to take a small sip from the mug in her hands. She could have passed it off as just that - if only that mug hadn't already been empty a long time ago.

"Please don't read the rest aloud," She said, trying in vain to suppress a grimace. "I'll just turn over to the last page and you'll find what you want. Don't need you seeing what I wrote on the second."

I felt my lips curl by the corners. "Well, now you're just getting me curious."

"I'm heading to the last page now!"

To make an unnecessarily long story short, the last page continued on with that Blightfall comment, going into even greater detail about what it was and what it was supposed to inflict upon the already anarchic land of Asteria. Players would be able to recruit a Speaker and/or train one of their suitable party members to be a Listener. 

The more I read about what this guy had to say, the more suspect he became. His words and statements were like faint echoes of Ria's own explanations. Though they weren't exactly a one-on-one carbon copy, it was still very much what Ria had already iterated.

That Blight was bad, that Blight decays over time, that the black ones were the most dangerous type of Blight.

Had the peculiarities just ended there, I would have… well, I wouldn't have brushed it off, that'd be stupid, but I'd had been more than willing to think of him as nothing more than a spokesperson.

But then I went on to read something that pointed the finger of suspect squarely onto him. Apart from being the captain at the helm of this so-called passion project of the studio, he had also played a role in writing major plot points of Asteria's story, and also happened to be the man behind one of Asteria's most popular characters.

Eshwlyn the Elf-Knight.

This Howard Phillips fella here was the one that created Ash. The one that weaved and sown most of Asteria's plot. The man so eager for Blight's implementation.

The blog ended with a selfie picture of Amanda shooting for a pose, blushing a bright pink, standing side-by-side with a rugged-looking man, bespectacled, stubbled, and very much twice her age, flashing a sparkling smile while dual-wielding peace signs.

I sipped the last of my drink. "He's quite dashing."

"He was a crush, alright?" Amanda said, huffing a breath. "This blog was a year and a half ago, I outgrew it… him. I only remembered this even existed after everything that's happened."

"I didn't say anything," I said, both arms raised on either side. 

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Right, whatever… so, now that you read that, what are you thinking?"

What was I thinking? Funny she should ask that. My mind was racing, my thoughts a-scramblin' and I don't think caffeine had anything to do with it… I looked back at the photo, staring through those squared-rimmed glasses, into those cheery eyes so blue and bright. Howard Phillips...

He seems like a jolly guy.

He seems like my type of guy.

"I'm thinking we might need to go and pay this guy over here another visit."

Amanda didn't seem at all surprised to hear that. Guess our thoughts were going along the same line of thinking here. Maybe this guy was much more than just your regular old run-of-the-mill ambitious game developer.

Now I'm not saying this guy here was the primary cause for the recent happenings we've been having… I'm just saying that I didn't know that he wasn't. In any case, a lead was a lead, and it was better to have one than none at all. 'Least we have something to go off of.

"You have any way of contacting him?" I asked.

Amanda said no.

"Know where he lived?" I asked again.

She said no to that too. 

Have him on friends? A follower online, maybe? Perhaps through a friend of a friend. No, nope and nopey no. Howard himself was a recluse in the bustling world of social media.

Took another glance at the photo, and asked, "Where was this taken?"

But Amanda was one step ahead of me. "Forget it. That was taken in their main studio, and that is on the otherside of the country. With the lockdown in place, you won't be getting on a plane anytime soon." 

Hearing that, I fell back to silent contemplation, rummaging around my head for any more bright ideas that she'd inevitably go shooting down in an instant, and as I was doing that, Amanda started staring at me with a little hint of self-satisfaction glimmering in her eyes.

"You know something I don't, don't you?" I asked.

She brought her phone to my face once again, and through squinted eyes, I saw an address, a picture of a building, and a location marker. Didn't know what I was staring at 'till Amanda gleefully explained.

"Lucky us, they have a branch situated right here in the city, all the way on the otherside of town… and Howard visits it from time to time too."

There it was, our golden ticket to the answers we seek.

"But.." Amanda continued. There's that 'but' I was waiting for. "It's a big stretch to assume he's even in town at the moment. It's more likely that…"

"He is," I said. "He's here."

She furrowed her brows. "How do you know that?"

"I don't," I told her. "Adalia's sister did. The other Matriarch. She mentioned a great mysterious presence she's been sensing in town for quite a while now, right before she got hit with the Blight. So if we put two and two together, I think we might just have found a name and a face for our great mysterious presence here."

Not only that... but every time I closed my eyes, I had a faint buzzing and whirring swirling through the darkness every since last night's lesson. Wasn't sure what that was at first, but I think now I do.

It was him. I was sensing him.