The missing child stole something from the Rat King, an ominous name for someone who ran the world below the streets of Eldin. A man whom the Sisters of the Allurian Orphanage had an ongoing relationship with.
This branched off another avenue of inquiry that was currently a dead end - Who is the Rat King, and what is the world beneath the streets of Eldin?
Then, the factual evidence whirled in front of me, lines connecting them. The sapphire in the bedroll said that the kid did expect to get out, and because it was hidden, he did not want the Sisters to find it. He was planning on getting out, but when the time came, he did not take it with him.
The opportunity to escape came suddenly and without warning. That was the only explanation. Whatever had triggered the boy to open his own flesh and scrawl the symbol on the wall had happened suddenly and unexpectedly. The only ways that he could have received contact from any place on the outside would be through the locked cell door, or, through the waste grate in the bottom of the cell.
The grate. What if someone had been down there, talking to the boy? Guiding him on how to escape. Giving him instruction on how to use an occult symbol as a means of escape.
I snapped back to reality. The cell came back into focus. A notification appeared in the bottom of my view summarizing my deduction.
"Someone told the boy how to escape," I said. "Whatever that symbol is, John drew it in a rush and knew that it would get him out of this cell. Someone reached out to him through the waste disposal grate, and this symbol somehow got him out."
"Very good, kid." James actually looked impressed.
I got a chunk of experience points for forming a hypothesis from the evidence gathered, which filled up another third of my experience bar. One more crime scene and I'd be at Level 3!
"I think we found pretty much everything we can from the cell down here," I said, eager to get back to it. I needed to level up again. "Let's head back upstairs and find Sister Margaret. Perhaps she can answer some of the burning questions that we have."
"Yes, good idea. Let's go."
Before we headed back upstairs, I pulled my Investigations Journal out of my pocket, along with a pencil. I reviewed the notes that the game had automatically made inside the journal throughout the course of the case. So far, this case looked as though it was more a case of a runaway child than a missing child.
If the situation was as bad as both James and Sister Margaret had inferred, then perhaps a life on the run for the boy was preferable to being punished by the Rat King.
Regardless of that, I needed to make a note of this symbol. James had no idea what it meant, and my latest deduction hadn't shed much light on it. All I knew was that it was tied to the escape, but I didn't know how. James had been working the streets of Eldin for some time, and if he didn't know what it was, then that meant it was something new. Something Eldin had never seen before. Unraveling the mystery of this symbol would lead us to a new avenue of investigation on this case.
I opened a brand-new page in my Investigations Journal, and I began to sketch the symbol in front of me. I started with the circle right in the center, then I drew the six incomplete triangles that surrounded it.
Circles were used to represent many things. It could represent everything or nothing. It could represent the Earth, or the sun, or even the moon. The incomplete triangles were puzzling. It was fairly well understood that an incomplete triangle that pointed upwards represented masculinity, whereas the incomplete triangle pointing downward was a representation of femininity.
Thanks, Dan Brown.
But none of these incomplete triangles pointed in either of those directions. It seemed as though each of these incomplete triangles had a matching partner on the other side of the circle. Two of them ran almost perfectly horizontal to one another, yet the other two pairs were positioned in diagonals.
Without knowing the importance of specific elements of symbols within Crematoria Online, I had absolutely no frame of reference to be able to decipher exactly what this symbol might be.
I looked from my page in the Investigations Journal with the sketch on it to the symbol on the door. I compared the two and was happy that I had managed a decent likeness. My skill in sketching increased. Wow, almost every action I took in this game was kept track of. There was no way I was going to be able to keep all of this straight. I closed my Investigations Journal and rejoined James in the hallway.
We walked back along the corridors, taking twists and turns that made my head spin. I followed James because he knew exactly where he was going. Eventually, we reached the stairs that led into the orphanage above. As we ascended, the feeling of oppression and danger that permeated the air so richly in the catacombs cleared up almost instantly.
Sister Margaret and two other sisters were waiting for us at the top of the stairs.
"Sister Margaret, would you mind if we had a chat in private?" James asked.
Sister Margaret said something quietly to the two sisters that flanked her. Both sisters nodded in deference, then left to return to their duties.
"Did you find anything?" Sister Margaret asked.
"As a matter of fact, we found something very interesting," I said.
I took my Investigations Journal back out of my pocket and flipped to the page where I had made the sketch of the symbol we found behind the door. I showed this page to Sister Margaret.
"Have you ever seen this symbol before?" I asked.
Sister Margaret shook her head. "Never. Where did you find it?"
"Behind the cell door," James said. "It looked like someone had drawn it in freshly spilled blood."
Sister Margaret's hand flew to her mouth.
"That's impossible. The sisters who came to me with the news that John disappeared would have checked there. I am sure that they would have..." Her voice trailed off. Her eyes unfocused as she looked beyond us. "The sisters should have checked behind the door before coming to me. When they told me that there was nothing out of the ordinary, that John had simply disappeared without a trace, I believed them. I should have gone down and checked myself."
"I have one question for you," I said.
"What might that be?" Sister Margaret asked.
"There was a drain in the center of the room. You force these orphans to pour their own piss and shit into it, isn't that right?"
"Well, yes. The facilities might not be what the children would expect living above, but it is part of the deterrent. After spending one night in the cells, the children would never want to go back. This was simply part of our strategy in ensuring that John would learn his lesson and would never offend again."
"Where does that drain connect to?" I asked. "Is it a self-contained waste management system, or does it open into a public sewer?"
"The orphanage is built directly above the Eldin sewers," Sister Margaret said. "The waste flows right into the city's sewers."
James looked over at me, and he said exactly what I was thinking.
"The Rat King owns the sewers, and you gave him a way to get at John without you even realizing it," James said.
"No! We had an agreement. He would never!" Sister Margaret's face grew red as she protested.
"Never trust a rat, especially one who names himself King," James said. "Now, tell us, where is the closest access to the sewers? In order to rule out the Rat King's involvement, we're going to need to get to the bottom of this. We need to see what's going on beneath the cells."
Sister Margaret took a breath to calm herself. "Fine. Follow me."
Chapter Sixteen
Into the Sewers
Sister Margaret led us deeper into the orphanage. We walked by the rooms that the children slept in and passed a large mess hall where the children and the sisters ate their meals. At the end of the hall we passed into the kitchen, which was full of sisters. They were all dressed in identical black and white habits as they busily prepared for lunch. Large pots of soup bubbled on stove tops. Fresh bread baked in wood-fired ovens.
Even though it didn't look all that appetizing, I still found my mouth watering at the smell.
There was a large batch of small sweet cakes cooling on a stone bench as we passed. James grabbed one and stuck it in his pocket. I could imagine that sweet treats like that one were one of the only pleasures that the children here in the Allurian orphanage would get. As I passed by the tray of sweets, I followed suit and grabbed one for myself.
We passed through the kitchen, and then down a dingy hall that led into a walled-in courtyard. Sister Margaret led us into the center and stood in front of a circular manhole cover.
"Well, here it is," Sister Margaret said. "This is the entrance to the sewers. A word of warning though; this is where we dump all our waste. It has been known to attract some rather unsavory creatures. We had to remove the ladder to stop the fiends from crawling back up into the orphanage in search of a meal, so once you go down there, there's no coming back up. You will have to find another route out of the sewers."
I shot a look of uncertainty at James, but he didn't seem to be worried at all.
"You're sure that your garbage disposal connects to the tunnels beneath cells?" I asked.
"Everything connects down there," Sister Margaret said. "I couldn't tell you with any certainty that the area beneath our feet right now connects directly to the area beneath the cells, but the children in the cells say that they can hear things skittering down there in the dark."
"The kids told you about creatures moving down under the cells, and you did nothing about it? Those poor kids would have been scared to death!"
"Not to death. Never to death. But there's nothing wrong with a little fear to use as motivation," Sister Margaret said with a dark look.
James barked a mirthless laugh. "I remember that mantra all too well, Sister. Fear made me into the man that I am today."
I wasn't sure whether James meant that as a negative or a positive comment, but judging from the smile on Sister Margaret's face, she considered it quite a compliment. James turned to me.
"Are you ready to do this, kid? Once we go down, we might have to fight our way back out. There's no telling how long we might be down there."
"I didn't come all this way to let some rotten food scraps and scavengers scare me off. I'm ready when you are." The confidence in my voice was fake.
"Well Sister Margaret, I wish that I could say that it had been a pleasure seeing you again," James said. "But I'm not going to lie to you."
"It may not have been a pleasure to you James, but it has been to me. To see the man that you have become fills me with pride."
James's face remained impassive. Whatever he was feeling beneath the surface, he didn't let it show. He simply motioned with his head towards the door, inviting Sister Margaret to leave.
"I think not. Someone needs to close that behind you," she said. "There are things down there that can climb walls."
James sighed, then knelt beside the manhole cover. "Of course. Have it your way, Sister." He motioned for me to join him. "Help me with this."
I hunkered down next to the opposite side of the manhole cover. There were four small holes in it, each big enough for us to slide a finger into. I'd seen construction workers in the streets of Manhattan move manhole covers like this in real life. They had long metal poles with hooks on the end that allowed them to easily move them about, but we didn't have anything of the sort. All we had were our hands. James had hooked both of his index fingers into the two holes on his side of the manhole, and I did the same on my side.
"This is going to be heavy, kid."
"It's all good. I've got this," I said, but when I started to lift the manhole lid away, it was clear to me that I didn't actually have this.
Using nothing but our index fingers and the strength in our bodies we tried to lift the manhole cover from its cradle. Even straining with all my strength, I barely managed to move my side at all. On the other side of the manhole cover James was straining to lift the heavy metal cover over the lip, and once I saw what he was doing, I stopped trying to lift my side. I worked with him and started pushing my side. The cover started to slide along the stone, revealing the darkness of the sewer down below.
A message appeared in the bottom of my view.
Your Heavy Lifting skill has increased!
It seemed as though almost everything I did in this game improved some kind of secondary skill in some way. I guess it was like real life in that way. The more heavy lifting you did, the better you were at lifting heavy things. The more practice you had at persuading people to do what you wanted them to do, the more persuasive you became. Could almost any skill in Crematoria Online be trained through repetition?
How specific was it? And was there a certain secondary attribute limit? Could I just keep on lifting this manhole cover and move it about to keep increasing it exponentially forever? Unlikely. There would probably be some kind of effort/reward curve that would taper off growth as the skill secondary attribute continued to grow, and there would probably be an upper limit of some kind.
That would require further investigation later. We had more pressing matters at hand.
I peered into the dim light below. Rubbish had been obviously sitting down there in the dark for quite some time. There were signs that scavengers had frequented this area and dug through the trash looking for scraps. Tracks had been carved through the filth, where the sewer-dwelling creatures had passed through. My mind became filled with images of giant rats and cockroaches and even alligators that had been flushed down the toilet as pets. They always said that there were alligators living in the sewers beneath Manhattan, and though I knew rationally that it was highly unlikely, I always did get a strange feeling when I walked past a sewer opening. Like I was being watching by something hungry.
"You ready, kid?" James asked.
"Ready as I'll ever be," I said. I hadn't planned on swallowing nervously, but I did.
"I'll go down first, then you jump down after me. At least the garbage pile looks soft."
Imagines of hidden needles and broken bottles immediately flashed into my head. There could be anything under that top layer of food scraps.
"Be my guest," I said.
James grinned, and then he was gone. I heard him land with a wet squelch, and then he sloshed through the dark away from the landing site.
I swallowed nervously again. My mouth had suddenly gone dry. I looked back towards Sister Margaret and expected her to still be on the other side of the court, but she wasn't. She was right behind me.
"You watch him," she said. "Treborn always was a troublesome one."
"Duly noted," I said. Sister Margaret's proximity to me was enough to spur me forward. Just being close to her made me feel icky.
I lowered my feet down into the sewer, then slid my butt over the edge. I tumbled down, weight and momentum pushing me forward. I landed on my hands, knees, and face, right into rotten vegetable scraps. My mouth was filled with the sweet starchy taste of rotting potato skins. My stomach heaved on its own, but I managed to stop myself from throwing up.
"Nice dismount," James said. I wanted to wipe that damned grin off his face.
"Yeah, thanks," I said as I stood up and wiped the garbage off.
James didn't wait for me to be ready before heading towards an opening further on down the chamber. The sound of running water reached us, but I couldn't see the source.
"So, where to from here?" I asked.
"If my memory holds true, then we should be fairly close to a junction in the sewer that will double us back underneath the cells. Then we can search below that grate and see what we find."
"Good. I know we've only just got here and all, but I am just about ready to get out of the sewers as quickly as we can."
Sewer levels really were the worst. Even worse than straight up water levels, if you ask me. That said, the whole being able to smell the game world thing made almost everything about Crematoria Online worse. Everyone loves the idea of a sword and sorcer
y fantasy, but no-one realizes that most people smelled like shit most of the time.
James chuckled. "I really do hope it's gonna be that simple, kid. The only way we can wrap this up that easily is if we find John's body. If we find nothing at all, then I'm afraid we won't be seeing sunshine again for quite some time. The only way is down."
It was at that point that I realized it had been a few solid hours since I logged into Crematoria Online for the first time. While my mind had been busy playing, I wondered how my body was coping. Everything in the information given by Everdark Entertainment said that my body would be safe while I played Crematoria Online, and not only safe but rested. When I finally managed to get my hands on that Celestial Offering and log out, it would be like I had just had a deep sleep. They said it was much like hibernation. Those hoses that invaded my face were going to keep me hydrated and fed while my consciousness was transported here, but I couldn't stop myself from worrying.
If something happened to my body while my consciousness was here in the game, what would happen? What would I do if there was no body for my mind to be transported back into?
Normally when I played video games like this, I needed a break a couple of hours after I had started my session. I started to either lose interest, or needed a toilet break, or maybe something to eat. Those things wouldn't be issues in the Crematoria Chamber, so I had no need to worry about that kind of thing.
Crematoria Online seemed to track almost everything in some kind of sophisticated system, but I hadn't yet noticed how the game tracked hunger or thirst. Some more hardcore survival games also forced players to sleep in order to simulate a more life-like experience. Would Crematoria Online have anything similar? I hadn't noticed any kind of bars or meters that tracked hunger or thirst so far, but it was as though thinking about being hungry forced my avatar body to realize that it was actually hungry.
The sound of my rumbling stomach echoed off the stone chamber's walls, as though thinking about being hungry had made my in-game body realize how starving it was.
Rise of the Crimson Order: A Crematoria Online LitRPG Novel Page 13
