Chapter 28: Target Spotted

「…… Not here either.」

The armored knight lets out a sigh as if trying to alleviate the disappointment she was feeling at the current moment.

In fact, there were traces of him being there. For example, there was a certain high-level player here who was a member of the “Tempura Knights” guild who claimed that he saw someone who looked just like Sanraku. But no matter where she looked outside of the inn, Sanraku was nowhere to be found.

She has even forsaken playing and is sitting outside the inn waiting for him to appear at some point. Just when she was starting to worry that something might have happened to him, she received an email.

「The clan’s message board……」

One of the clan’s additional features aside from a dedicated building and NPCs that would keep the clan members’ items safely stored, was a private message board that only clan members could use. And contrary to normal email or text messages, they were being delivered in real time, without any time-lag.

Armored knight read through the message board that was full of other clan members’ messages, and upon reading she could feel her heart coming to a stop more than a few times.

「To Saiga-0,

Sorry for asking so suddenly, but I need your help with locating a certain person.

There’s a player I would wish to scout, so please help me find him.

His location is near Sekandil, and he’s a new player with a bird mask on his face and Curse marks on his torso and legs. His name is “Sanraku” and he’s accompanied by a dressed Vorpal Bunny.

I know it’s unheard of, but he received two Curse marks from Night Prowler Luukan.

From Saiga-100」

Armored knight…… she and Saiga-0 were good friends. Also, it seems that he didn’t log in for almost a week now.

Then she also felt surprised that this player managed to hold his ground against Night Prowler Luukan, a unique monster that her guild wanted to take down for quite a while now.

「…… Fufu.」

Now she had even more incentive to find him. At first she will deepen her friendship with him, then she’ll introduce him to her clan, and then…… While she was making plans like that, she received another e-mail.

「……???」

Having a really bad feeling, she opened the email.

「To Saiga-0,

This is a post scriptum to my previous message, but according to our sources, members of “SF-ZOO”, “Ashura-kai” and “10:00 pm Army” are moving in to secure Sanraku.

Please note that this is likely to develop into a serious case of PVP.

From Saiga-100」

「~~~~~~~~~!?!?!?」

Upon hearing that the top dogs of ShangriLa Frontier were now on the move to get Sanraku (and one of those guilds excelled in PVP), Saiga-0 resumed her search on the double. She had to find him before they do.

「……???」

「Is there something wrong?」

「No, but it’s just that…… I had this strange shiver in my spine. …… And what is that noise?」

I know that I had this strange feeling of looming danger, but…… nothing seemed to be wrong here.

「So? Would you like to keep searching for the Area Boss, or do you want to stop here?」

It would actually be a good idea to keep our hunger bars full. So I took out a flint and sticks from my inventory and used them to start a fire. Yeah, I succeeded on my second try. Nicely done.

「Right, I guess I’m going to eat as well.」

I started to roast the wings of the Bandit Vulture over the fire while Emul stuck some carrots on sticks and began to roast them as well. It’s cool and all, but the carrots are so hard inside that it will take a while to actually roast them.

「Ugh, this jerky is quite tasteless if I do say so myself.」

「Hot carrots are quite delicious.」

「Speaking of which, since we didn’t gather any information regarding this boss, I guess we are going to fight it completely blind.」

「Hmm, I don’t think that’s true. From what I gather, the boss monster of this area is actually a creature called “Mud Digger”. It likes to suddenly spring up from the ground and non-stop charge at its opponents, so we need to be constantly on the move.」

Springing up from the ground…… does that mean it is some kind of a mole type monster? No, no, no, after my experience with the giant serpent as the first boss I must renounce all that I know about monsters and expect the unexpected to happen.

「What is it going to spit at us this time? Piss? Phlegm? Or maybe it’s going to breathe fire? That’s always a possibility.」

「Ugh, Sanraku-san, that comment of yours was surprisingly vulgar just now.」

Hahaha. There was one thing that I knew. One thing that was giving me consolation. At least this boss monster won’t attack me like those bugged avatars from “Crap”. So hey, silver lining.

Right, so let us go towards the second area boss, the “Mud Digger!”

The information that Emul disclosed about the boss is basically something you could obtain at Information Broker’s in town.

Every NPC that have come into contact with a boss or a piece of loot from it can have information about it.