Hey Guys!
I know I usually don't post something at the beginning of Heroes of Rune, but felt I should this time. Sorry for taking so long to update. who would've known that teachers could heap so many project on you at one single time. Plus, there were a few things in this chapter that I couldn't bring myself to post it while they were still in it. But even then, I was still debating putting this off another day or two until I heard some news.
For those of you who don't know what RoosterTeeth is, they are the finest example of a few people starting something on the internet and making a livelihood out of it. One of those shows is called RWBY. It is the brainchild of a guy known as Monty Oum, who in my opinion was one of the greatest animators our world has ever seen.
I say was because yesterday at 4:34 PM, Monty died after fighting a severe allergic reaction.
I never had the honor of meeting Monty, but he and his work were a great inspiration for me writing stories and putting them on the internet. To lose him means to kind of lose a bit of myself. I'm pretty sure everyone at RoosterTeeth and their fan's feel so as well. Don't believe me? They set up a fundraiser to help pay for medical expenses and asked for $50k. It passed that in three hours and as I'm writing this, several hours after they announced his passing, is at $183,022 and still rising.
Matt Hullum, one of the founding members of RoosterTeeth has asked in lieu of flowers, that we do something creative. To use our imagination in a way that makes the world a better place. Just like Monty did.
Monty, I am going to make you proud.
875Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAc4G4KTv66
As they made their way out of the outhouse, Alex noticed a character leaning against the wall in mock boredom, next to a bulging burlap bag. He had olive colored skin and wore a formfitting black tank top and brown leather breeches. Two empty sheathes hung from a thick belt. A thin moustache hung from his upper lip. As they filed out, he tensed and made a move for the sheaths before returning to his previous stance.
“So, you plan on attacking the Castile with just four people. That’s pretty loco.” He said with a slight Spanish accent.
“I don’t suppose you plan on joining us, compadre?” Alex said in a failed attempt to mimic his tone.
He gave a small chuckle and shook his head. “No senior, I am just here to use the ladder. Although, I suppose I could wish you luck as well.”
“Wait, how do you know about the hideout?” Miles said suspiciously. “I’ve never seen you there before.”
He looked at him. “Who do you think found the cavernas de engaño in the first place? Surely not Master Qilin. No; I came across them and sold them to him for a pile of coins, and the promise of a safe place to store items. I come from time to time to store all the wonderful loot I come across. The name is Silent Stealth.” He gave a short bow with a flourish.
“I’ve heard of you,” Janus said. “You’re the guy who’s stolen from just about every single faction in the game! You even managed to get in the Hackers lair!”
“Si, senior. That was me.”
“Any chance you could give us some pointers on how to get in?” Alex asked.
He gave a short laugh. “Certainly compadre. Don’t do it. Few know this, but I decided to go back in a few months later. I nearly died getting in, and I did die before I made it up to the second floor. They somehow studied my form and developed a way to counter it.”
“Well then we’ll just have to make sure we don’t go in like you did.” Alex decided. “Besides, we’re going in to destroy the castle, not rob them blind.”
Silent Stealth eyed him before letting out a long sigh. “Well, if you’re set on this, endeavor, I suppose you’ll need this.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a small notebook.
“This,” he said, “Is how I made it past every guard, disarmed every trap, and taken the crown jewels without getting caught. It contains almost every configuration of every castle in the game. See, the developers are somehow incapable of designing fortifications. Either they are too large for most guilds to defend, or the walls are made of tinfoil. The best castiles in Rune are those imported in from other games. The developers refuse to leak any designs for fear that the ruse would be discovered.”
“So how exactly does that help us?” Miles said, crossing his arms.
Silent Stealth shook his head. “Please, tell me this idiota is not your leader. You might as well quit now.”
“Hey, this idiota gets irritated when called an idiota. He tends to take said offenders and cut them into tiny bits.” Miles said as he reached for his sword.
“Guys, wait,” Croe said to defuse the situation. “I think I’ve got it. Are you saying that you can find the blueprints of the hacker’s lair by looking at other games?”
Silent Stealth clapped his hands. “I see now that there are some of you who aren’t complete imbeciles. Perhaps there is hope for your endeavor yet.”
If ever an animated scarecrow could look smug, it was Croe.
“Whatever.” Miles said. “That still doesn’t explain how you’ve got all these blueprints. There are thousands of games out there. It’d be pretty damn hard to look through every single one of them to find a handful of castles.”
“Yes that would be true, had the developers not gone on record about some of their favorite video game series, and that they took inspiration from it when designing the world. A little cross referencing reveals a castle that looks almost exactly like the one the hackers use.”
“And how exactly did you figure this out?” Miles said skeptically.
Silent Stealth stared at Miles for a long second before finally saying, “By listening and paying attention- a trait you seem to be lacking in.”
“How much do you want for it?” Alex asked hurriedly, noticing Miles clenching his mouth.
Silent Stealth laughed. “All the gold I have ever stolen would be but a sliver of what I’d sell this book for. There is, however, a cheaper option.” He flipped through the book for a few seconds before ripping out a page.”
“This is the diagram of the Hackers castle. I will give it to you for a favor.”
“Deal,” Croe said. Silent Stealth nodded and handed it to him.
“Woah, hold on! What’s this ‘favor’?” Miles asked suspiciously.
“Nothing out of the ordinary my friend. During my, less fortunate infiltration I lost two knives that were very dear to me. I would like them back.”
“So out of all the gold and riches in their hideout, you want us to get you two knives? How the hell are we supposed to find them?”
Silent Stealth rolled his eyes and sighed. “They are the knives of the great Silent Stealth. Their possession of such knives shows that they caught me- a huge embarrassment for thieves. Knowing them, they’ll have them prominently displayed. Just be sure though, I will lend you this.” He unbuckled the two sheaths from his belt and tossed them to Miles who caught them awkwardly.
Silent Stealth walked past them and stepped onto the ladder. “I must be going. I wish you the best of luck on your quest.”
“Wait, if you’re going, how will we get the knives back to you?”
“You won’t have to,” he said. He quickly descended and the enchantment washed over the hole, hiding it from the world. It became just another dingy latrine, next to a dingy tavern.
@0@0@
It was nightfall by the time the small group made it to the Hackers lair. Unlike the Coder’s base, the Hackers made sure people knew where they were. The castle was situated in the middle of a valley with a major road leading out of it. The walls were tall and thick with NPC soldiers and hackers alike patrolling the battlements. The tallest structure inside was easily the keep situated in the middle of the castle. It was easy to see why the Coders considered it impenetrable.
“We’re here,” Miles said.
Alex peered through the murky night in search of the hackers, but the only ones he saw were in a small group about 500 meters away.
“I don’t get it, why are there so few of them? Aren’t they supposed to have like, a bunch of people?”
“They’re probably all in the hot tubs in the back,” Croe said.
“Hot tubs? Why the hell do they have hot tubs?” Alex said. “You’re not pulling my leg are you?”
“I’m not. Check the map to see,” Croe said, handing him the map.
Alex unfolded the piece of paper, but was unable to read it. He conjured up the tendril ball and held it close, but quickly yanked it away when a stray tendril disintegrated a corner of the page into a stream of binary code.
“That’s not going to work,” he said. “Anyone got torches?”
“We lost them in the cave, remember?” Miles answered.
“What’s wrong?” Janus asked.
“I can’t read the map because we don’t have any torches, and I have to hold this stupid hacker virus so close to the paper to read, it destroys it!”
Janus thought for a minute. “Can you do it again? One of the attacks the hackers gave you?”
Alex was confused, but complied. He held the ball close to Janus, and waited. He could hear the sounds of someone banging on the keyboard, and furiously clicking the mouse. This went on for about a minute before he finally stopped and slammed down on what Alex assumed to be the enter key.
The viral tendrils were engulfed in a brilliant fireball. Alex jumped in surprise and dropped the map. It fluttered towards the ground until Croe snatched it from the wind and handed it back to Alex.
“Looks like it works.” Janus said happily. “I took the liberty of also adding it to your sword powerup as well.”
“How did you do that?” Alex asked in amazement.
Janus looked around nervously before answering in a low voice, “I did a freelance job for the developers a while back. When I finished, I left a back door in to make it easier to do any future maintenance. I’ll also use it on occasion to help update the scripts used to ban hackers.”
“Dude that is so cool!” Alex exclaimed.
Janus frantically made a shushing motion. “Don’t say it out loud!” he said in a loud whisper. “The last thing I need is for a hacker to hear it. They might think I have access to the Core,” he said. “Which I don’t” he added hastily.
“What would be so bad about being able to get this, ‘Core’?” Alex asked.
“It’s because the Core is what we call the primary part of Rune’s source code” Miles said somberly. “It’s what tells the game what to do. Because of this, the Dev’s put some serious cyphers on it. So good, that no one’s been able to get in. And the Hackers want to real bad. If they even think you might have access, you’d be better off just deleting your account because you will never have another peaceful moment.”
“Right now, they can’t do much more than create false patches so they can keep using the virus, and create false accounts to throw us off.” Croe added. “If they could get into the Core however, it becomes less of what can they do, and more of what can’t they do.”
Miles glared at him. “I was getting to that. But that’s not important right now. Right now, we’ve got to figure out how the hell we’re going to actually do this?”
“We could always pretend to be merchants who specialize in owl related products,” Croe offered.
Miles looked at him. “Where the hell did that come from? That was literally the lamest and most confusing idea I have ever heard.”
Croe looked at him annoyed. “It could work. There are plenty of useful things we could make out of owls. The giant killer owl quest alone gives you enough owl pelts to make fifty owl capes!”
“Well of course you’ve done that quest,” Miles replied.
“I think it’d work,” Alex quickly said, noticing Croe’s hand was dropping towards the scythe hanging from his belt.
“Really?” Croe asked, perking up.
“There’s only one problem with it. We don’t have any owl related products to use as a ruse.”
“Oh;” Croe deflated.
“We’ll save it for another time.” Janus offered.
“I could make it work without any owl pelts,” Croe muttered.
Alex looked at the map again. This time, the fireball burned bright enough for him to easily see. “It’s apparent that we can’t do a frontal assault; it’s been tried and it did not work,” Alex said. “I think our best bet would be to go around the guys down there- it would cause too much noise to take them out. Once we’re past them, we scale the east wall and take the stairs down to the courtyard.”
“What then?” Miles asked.
“What do you mean?” Alex replied, confused.
“What I mean is, what’s the overall reason we’re breaking in? You said that you wanted to make them pay, but you haven’t exactly said how you were going to do that.”
Everyone began looking at Alex. He could feel the sweat running down his forehead as he realized he had forgotten such a crucial part of the plan.
“I, uh,” he stammered.
“We could always use the explosives they’ve got stored in the armory to blow their castle up,” Croe offered.
Relief washed over Alex as everyone turned their gaze from him to Croe.
“The map shows that an entire third of the armory is taken up by bags of explosives. Judging by Stealth’s notes on the back, they’ve got just about every explosive you can get in the game. If we want to destroy it, I can think of no more of an ironic way than to do it with their own explosives.”
“Why do they need so much explosive?” Miles asked.
“Does it matter?” Alex asked. “It’s there and we need it. What more do we need to know.”
“It does matter,” Miles replied. “No one needs that much explosives. Not anyone who’s up to anything good. So my question is; what plans do they have that require several tons of it?”
There was silence for a moment while everyone considered the question. Finally, Croe spoke up and said, “We might find the answer in the armory. I suggest we look for it while grabbing what we need.”
“Agreed,” Alex said, handing. He handed the map back to Croe and stood up. “Apart from stay away from the guys at the bottom, I’ve got nothing to add. Anyone else got anything? Croe? Miles? What about you, Janus? Janus?”
Janus wasn’t moving. His head was slumped over as if he was sleeping while crouched down - a sign that he was AFK.
A sinking feeling settled into Alex’s stomach. In the back of his mind, he remembered a story on the internet about a group of player who set out to accomplish a feat of similar difficulty of what they were about to attempt. They had made an intricate plan that had been ruined by one player being AFK during the planning and getting the entire team killed.
“Janus,” he began.
Suddenly Janus straightened up. He looked at the group before turning and looking at the group of hackers in the valley below. He cocked his head for a moment, as if trying to decide what to do. Finally, he spoke in a voice that was definitely not Sam’s.
“It’s about time they let us out of that stinkin’ cave.” He pulled two grenades from his sleeves and charged down the hill straight towards the hackers.875Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMk2aAx01JA
