Free End Online: Volume 4 by D. Wolfin Page A

halter dress has been pulled up to her naval. I can’t help but glance
at her long and slender legs, which shine with a milky white radiance.
    “Blue…” I mindlessly say
aloud, hastily looking elsewhere while standing up to try and hide the fact
that I saw.
    Fen also gets up at
roughly the same time, adjusting herself as she does. As soon as I stop hearing
any noises behind me, I deem it to be safe and turn around. Fen is standing
there while tilting her head curiously at me.
    “You were… too fast…” She
stares intently at me while speaking.
    I have no response to her,
only feeling the paranoia of her knowing that I saw her exposed undergarments.
I slowly start to head back toward the small acacia grove that my speed caused
us to catapult out from. The wolf girl silently follows behind me as I feel her
icy stare digging into my back.
    “Is blue… good?” The
dreaded words sound from behind me and my heart stops.
    ***************************************************
***************************************************
    -Mikhail-
    “Sir, I am terribly sorry
about this.”
    I bow my head in shame,
but he lets out an exasperated sigh and tells me to stand up straight.
    “Look Mikhail, it isn’t
your fault. But, I’m curious as to what exactly happened here.” My boss, Henry,
furrows his brow as he speaks.
    “We can just overwrite the
data and send me back to where I was before, but I am afraid that the party we
are following and investigating will have already left the area.”
    “As I said when you told
me half an hour ago, that is a concern. But there are chances they are still
there. Did you query the player data tables for their current location like I
asked?”
    “Sir, I did. The bad news
gets worse. It is not just ‘Lost’ and NPC ‘Fen’; it is now coming up with empty
results on all the party members.”
    “What do you mean? All the
players?!”
    “Yes, every last one of
them.”
    I can see confusion
riddling Henry’s face. This is understandable, considering something is
definitely out of the ordinary here.
    “Mikhail.”
    “Yes?”
    “Quick, log onto ‘End
Online’! We will manually adjust your player settings while you’re in the
game!”
    I quickly move to the room
next door while Henry grabs his laptop and storms off to the server room.
Grabbing the custom developer V-Link, I turn the system on and watch the world
fade away through the visor.
    ***************************************************
    I eagerly wait outside the
church in Swordbreak for Henry to contact me. The V-Link does not stop people
from hearing external sounds, so it is quite easy for someone to contact the
person in virtual reality or for them to know something is happening to their
real body. The only downside is it is difficult for the person in virtual
reality to respond.
    This is where the
company’s custom V-Links are different. They are the only model that does not
block the outgoing speech signals from the brain. Thus, any sounds I make in
the game will be reproduced by my real body, but the stereo effect of hearing
my voice from my real body and from within the game is somewhat nauseating.
    “Mikhail, can you
hear me?”  I hear Henry’s voice through a
receiver in my V-Link.
    “Sir, I can hear you.”
    “Good, I have
accessed the main system and brought up your player data… Heh, nice name.”
    I hear my boss snickering
to himself. My forehead breaks out into a cold sweat as I secretly hope the
name doesn’t become a trend in the office.
    “Your player data has
clearly been converted to that of a player. But, it’s strange… you have a skill
that is just a jumble of code. It doesn’t appear to have any purpose to its
existence.”
    I glance once again over
the skill ‘False Aura of Confidence’. There is nothing strange about the skill
from the in-game side, except for the fact that it cannot be unequipped.
    “Okay, your player
data has been altered. Refreshing the cache and you should notice