Chapter 19: The Ties That Bind

Chapter 19: The Ties That Bind

Returning to Kruxol, Crucis noticed that a few large notices had been set up on billboards around the town. Looking more closely, he saw that they showed the schedule of groups travelling between Kruxol and other nearby towns. These groups were set up by strong Guilds in response to the bug, and were intended to assist players with transport between towns while guarding them from attack. Crucis scanned the list of incoming journeys from Sanra, and saw that one was due to depart in one hour. He decided that it would be useful for Cael to hitch a ride on this journey, to join him here in Kruxol.

However, this still left him with an hour to spare. He was slightly hesitant about switching accounts, because Cael wasn't as adapted to stealth and hunting players in the wild, and he knew that he would have to figure out some way around this. However, he quickly thought of a way to ease Cael in. Going to the 'Trinket Store,' he searched their section of miscellaneous goods to find a [Sturdy Rope], a long, thick white rope that was coiled like a white python around a wooden stake. Purchasing this for 200 gold, he went to the South-East outskirts of Kruxol, where he didn't see anyone else around. Here, he saw a rickety building labelled 'Storage Containers for Sale.'

This area was initially added as a stopgap during the game's testing phase, to allow players to store items while the current Storage building was still being ironed out. The purchase of a few smaller game companies allowed for their developers to be repurposed towards this game, but due to this there was occasional rotation in the development team and this discontinuity meant that several features weren't fully-implemented during testing. The 'storage containers' were a remnant of the initial method for storing a player's inventory: like a locker room, players would pay for the key to a large, wooden storage cabinet, and could freely place their items inside or withdraw them. In early versions of the game, this was sometimes treated as akin to a marketplace, with players keeping their container open to show other players their wares, although only the original player who owned the container could withdraw items from it. The player could withdraw and sell items if an agreeable price was found.

However, by now it was barely used due to better alternatives like the Storage building and Guild treasury. The official reason for keeping the storage containers in the game was that they hadn't had the chance to run the other storage methods through most phases of testing, and were keeping this here temporarily while adjudging whether the other methods were suitable. The other, unacknowledged reason was that they had issues with removing the storage container code, because the rotating development team had connected the storage container area's code with the rest of the code related to storage, in such a way that removing this container facility could make the rest of the storage facilities break down or become inconsistent.The initial posting of this chapter occurred via N0v3l.B11n.

Gathering his rope, he saw that ykpaiha was beginning to gather his bearings after being surprised by the sudden attack. The warrior had probably just been expecting another wild dog pup to be emerging from the bush, if anything. Crucis quickly used [Figure Blur], blocking ykpaiha's vision of him, before leaning down and using [Stunning Dagger] to incapacitate the foe. Quietly, he wrapped a part of the rope around ykpaiha's neck, and then held this taut in the air while using a basic [Punch] to press ykpaiha's head into the ground inside the bush. He held on until he felt his opponent losing consciousness. He heard ykpaiha muttering, "What the hell is attacking me? A ghost?" Seemingly he had been unable to catch a clear sight of Crucis, meaning that the [Figure Blur] was proving effective. As soon as the cooldown ended, Crucis used [Chokehold] again, lightly pressing ykpaiha's injured, hoarse throat until the warrior slumped to the ground unmoving, with only 11% of his HP left.

Crucis grabbed the rope, and began wrapping it around ykpaiha's lower arms in order to restrain the warrior. He then wrapped it around the rest of ykpaiha's torso, and legs. He withdrew a piece of fine, white clothing that he had looted from the couple voyaging to the lake, and decided at the spur of the moment to tie it around the warrior's mouth as a muzzle. He wrung the shirt into a cylindrical shape, then tied it around the warrior's head to prevent any screams. At first, he dragged the warrior along the ground carefully, and then lifted the warrior once he was satisfied that there would be no resistance.

Staggering back to the storage containers with the warrior in tow, he found the container labelled C5, opened it, and shoved the warrior inside. At this point, the warrior had slightly regained his senses, and Crucis heard the sound of muffled whimpering from the container. He shut the door, and walked towards the building where he had received the keys. He asked for an additional set of keys to be provided, and, when prompted for another player to send it to, he chose Cael. It was possible for others to have spare keys to your Storage container, or even to open it, but only you were allowed to withdraw items from inside it. This feature was added in order to substitute for the lack of a Guild storage or treasury in the testing versions of the game. It was also possible for alts to both have keys, since only one could withdraw the items and hence it was not considered a problem.

Crucis checked the time on an old clock hung in the corner of the room. There was only 20 minutes left until the expedition from Sanra to Kruxol, which he intended Cael to join. Since he hadn't killed ykpaiha yet, he was not red-named. Due to this, he freely walked towards the centre of Kruxol, where he could save and switch characters. When asked which character to switch to, he selected the only option: Cael.