Another tripwire. That was diabolical. If he had tried to jump and made it, he would have tripped the wire for sure. He moved his finger very gently over the wire and realized it was pulled taunt. If the wire was broken and the tension released, whatever trap awaited would be sprung.
Examining the area on the other side of the tripwire, he made sure the area was clear of traps. Then, he carefully stepped over the tripwire and searched the area on the other side.
Nothing seemed to be amiss, so he collapsed in a heap. He stayed there for several minutes, letting his Stamina regenerate.
The course had been strenuous both mentally and physically and he’d been seconds from a certain death. But now it was almost over. Or was it? Jace looked toward his goal. The door was just a dozen or so feet away, so he would need to be careful and certainly get food and rest after this.
Suddenly he wondered if this might be the part where most people relaxed, with the goal so close. Any sadistic developer worth his salt would put the worst traps in the last stretch, hoping to catch the unwary.
With an effort, Jace stood and carefully examined everything around him. He didn't find anything. He moved a little closer and examined everything again. Still nothing.
As he got closer to the door, his tension grew. There had to be something else. The last part of it couldn’t be that easy.
Then he found something. It was a barely visible crack along the edge of the stones on the left wall. Oddly, Jace received no skill up and the crack didn't glow like other traps he had found. He followed the crack from bottom to top, then over and then down again. Roughly the shape of a small door. It was a secret door!
He turned his head to the back to the large door that had been his goal since he dropped down in the sewer and then back at the secret door and then back to the large door. Should he just to the big door? There were several locks on the door that could take some time to pick.
He looked at his quest timer. Five minutes left. Finish the quest or see what’s behind the secret door. Curiosity got the best of him. The other door could wait. He wanted to see what lay behind the secret door he had just found. Maybe it was treasure!
Jace needed to find the trigger mechanism for trigger mechanism for the door. He tried pushing, but the door didn't budge. He found a handhold and pulled with the same result. That meant it was latched. He started feeling around the area until his fingers found a smaller brick that felt differently than the others. He pushed it and heard an audible click and the secret door swung outward slightly.
Jace quickly grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it open. It opened into a passage to his right, that ran parallel to the corridor he was in and past the other door. Cautiously, he entered the passage and looked down it.
It only went about ten feet, which was a few feet beyond the door he was supposed to get into. He crept quietly to the end of the passage, carefully looking for traps the entire way. When he reached the other end of the short passage and hadn't found any traps, he relaxed slightly.
There was obviously another door here, that led back to the original corridor he had been in, but past the door. Was this a way to bypass all the locks on the other door? That would be nice.
He saw the door had a latch on this side and reached for it. He stopped his hand inches from the door handle. This seemed too easy. Was this the moment when people relaxed? Was this the final test? He checked his timer. Three minutes left.
He moved to the side of the door and retrieved his tin knife. Using the blade, he carefully lifted the latch. He heard the soft ping of something hitting metal.
Looking around to the back of the knife, Jace saw that a long, thick needle protruded from the door and had been stopped by the metal of the knife's blade. With his Cat-Vision, he could tell the blade was coated with something, poison no doubt.
Your Find Trap skill has increased by 1.
Jace continued lifting the latch with the knife blade, the door made an audible click and started to swing outward. Once the door was open and he checked for any tripwires in the doorway, he peaked out.
The passage was similar to the one he had just left, except the floor was dry. It was about 60 feet long with torches every 10 foot on alternating sides. At the end was a large wooden door.
He looked back towards the door only to find a wall. There was no door on this site. That meant the door on the other side was a fake door. There was actually no way to get through it. The door he’d seen early was a decoy. He smirked. Kudos to the developers on that one.
He crept out of the door and seeing that it had a latch on the outside as well, let the door shut. He examined the area around him but found no traps. He moved forward a foot and bent over, with the intention of searching the area in front of him when the door at the end of the passage opened and a head poked out. Jace recognized it as Webley the Snake.
"You made it with," Webley said and produced a small hourglass. "A few grains left. Well done..."
The thief opened the door further, revealing a well-lit room beyond. "Come on, we haven't got all night."
Reluctantly, Jace stood up and began walking towards Webley, but keeping a wary eye on the floor and walls. He made it to the door and the thief beckoned him inside.
"Not exactly the trusting sort," he said as Jace walked past him into the room. Webley slapped him on the back and shut the door behind them. "A man after my own heart."
He stepped around Jace and flourished his hands, “Welcome to the thieves guild. You passed our little test in the nick of time. Very good. Most don’t pass at all. But you did. With flying colors and that calls for a little something extra.”
Unable to think of anything to say, Jace nodded at the man’s words.
“Right you are,” Webley continued. “First, I want to officially offer you a place in the guild. Do you accept?”
“Yes,” Jace replied. That was why he’d gone through all of this, after all.
“Excellent,” Webley told him. “Now, since you are a member and you passed our little test in the time frame allotted, I want to present you with this.”
Webley produced a black leather jerkin from a bag at his waist that was much too small to contain it. A bag of holding, Jace guessed. He handed the jerkin to Jace. “Wear it with pride. Just, not in front of the guards.”
You receive Thieves Guild Jerkin.
You have completed the quest, “Find the Thieves Guild”
You gain 500 experience. Experience to next level 470.
You gain +50 faction with Whitecliff Thieves Guild
You gain +25 Webley the Snake
As Jace was gawking at the amount of experience he’d received, Webley gestured to him for him to follow. “Time to meet the crew!”
Chapter 6
As they went through the wooden door, Webley turned to him, “I forgot to ask. You didn’t get poisoned by the needle trap in the door handle, did you?”
“No,” he told the thief.
The room they entered was well lit with torches and sparsely furnished with only a small table with a few chairs, currently occupied by two men and a halfling playing cards. There was a painting of an armored knight on white horse hanging on the wall. It seemed almost out of place in the otherwise sparse room.
Webley caught his eye and said with a broad grin, “That’s from the Duke’s personal collection. I nicked it myself.”
“This room is where we greet new recruits, like yourself,” he continued, moving towards a door on the far end of the room. “This is Grub, Gridon and Aland.” None of the players looked up from their cards. “By the way, that is not the entrance you’ll normally use. Unless you feel like going through the gauntlet again.”
Jace nodded his acknowledgment and continued to follow the thief. He was glad he didn’t have to go through that again.
Webley led him through the door into a noisy circular chamber. Lining the walls, were indoor merchant stands. Jace knew what this was immediately, the Black Market. They were the
places where you could find stolen goods, poisons, and other things that the authorities had outlawed.
People were packed in like sardines and his HUD showed him that most of them were players of various levels.
“I know, tight squeeze,” Webley remarked. “And this is an off night.”
“We have our merchants here,” the guildmaster pointed out. “They can fence anything you acquire that might have a little heat on it. You can import anything you wish from central or western Alaes,” he said with a sly smile, “for a small finder’s fee of course. After all, we have expenses.”
Webley continued to walk as he talked, leading Jace through the crowd to another door on the far side of the room. The door opened into a long, rectangular room with tables and a bar near the far end. It looked and smelled like a seedy dive bar.
There was a single open door on the far end of the long room. On the left hand side, there were three doorways, one of which was behind the bar and judging from the smoke wafting out, led to the kitchen. Other than the stone ceiling and floor, it looked like any other in-game tavern he’d been in.
Looking around, Jace spied a number of shady looking characters populating the place. They sat at the small tables or at the bar, eating, drinking, or playing cards. There were also a number of scantily clad women of varying races near the far doorways, as well as a few shirtless men. He didn’t have to ask what their profession was.
“This here’s the Lucky Coin Inn. It’s a place you can kick back between jobs. Food’s better topside, but if you’ve got heat on you, this’ll be the only place the guards won’t find you. Plus, you can always try your hand at Skulls and Crowns or Knucklebones.”
Jace knew Skulls and Crowns was a card game and Knucklebones was a dice game. He never really got into games within games so hadn’t bothered to learn the rules. He did know that the two games had become so popular in the game that people now held tournaments in the real world.
As they neared the middle door, he nodded towards it. “The Lucky Coin has some rooms for rent. Again, not as nice as the ones above, but if you have heat and need a place to stay, it beats sleeping in the sewer or under the docks. Just make sure you bar your door before you fall asleep. No killing, that’s the rule. But other than that, I generally leave ‘disagreements’ up to your crew to work out between yourselves.”
They got close to the bar and a burly bartender bellowed out, “Hey Webley, fresh meat?”
Things in the underground tavern got quiet suddenly and almost every head turned to look him over. He was uneasy under all the scrutiny. The thieves stared only briefly, apparently sizing him up, before going back to whatever they were doing before.
“Yeah Olin,” Webley yelled back. “Just showing him the lay of the land.”
“Welcome kid,” the large man said, waving a hand holding a dirty dishrag.
“Thanks,” Jace responded. “Good to be here.”
They walked to the far end of the room and Jace saw a sunken in the right corner that had a dirt floor and some shabby fencing around it. “What’s that?”
Webley smiled. “That’s the arena. Occasionally, one of the members has a disagreement with one of the other members and we let them settle in there. And, of course, there’s always betting on the winner.”
Webley led him through the far door and into the next room. Unlike the previous two large rooms, this was tiny in comparison. It was a square with a large metal door on the right wall that was guarded by two burly panda-kin.
Panda-kin were one of the neutral races. They were large and looked like tall, anthropomorphic pandas. The panda-kin were more beast-like than some of the other kin, which made them excellent fighters. They might look cute, but Jace knew they could be vicious killers.
“Old Thom and Gerry over there keep watch over our vault, as well as the entrances,” Webley said. “I would suggest not trying to get through them.”
As if to emphasize his point, one of them made a fist and cracked his knuckles loudly.
“And this here is the main entrance you’ll use, it leads up to the Fainting Unicorn,” said Webley, pointing to a stairway leading up. Then he gestured to a metal door near it. “While this tunnel leads to a sewer grate on the west side of town, in case you need to enter or leave the city when the heat’s on you.”
“We don’t have many rules,” the thief said sternly, “but this one is important: Do not ever lead the guards to either entrance. If you do, we WILL find out and the assassin’s guild will have a new contract, get it?”
Jace nodded. “I get it.”
Webley the Snake grinned. “And by the way, I’m the guildmaster. I’ll be the one handing out assignments. When you’re ready for one, let me know. We’ll start you off easy, but every one’s expected to pull their weight around here.”
“Right, thanks!” Jace told the thief.
“Good,” he said. “When you need to find me, I’ll usually be in the Lucky Coin,” the thief said. “If I’m not, I’m up in the Fainting Unicorn common room, but we don’t conduct business up there, got it?”
“Got it,” Jace replied.
“Good luck thief,” Webley told him. “Try to stay out of the dungeons.”
You are now a member of the Whitecliff Thieves Guild.
And with that, Webley turned and headed back to the Lucky Coin. Jace was now an official member of the thieves guild and could start doing their quests. He turned around and followed Webley back into the tavern. He needed to make some gold.
The guildmaster went to an empty table and slid into one of the chairs. Without looking, he gestured for Jace to join him.
Jace sat in the chair across to him. “I’d like to get started right away.”
Webley looked him over. “Well, you’re new… but you did make it through the gauntlet, so maybe I have a thing or two for you.”
“I’ll take whatever you have,” he told the guildmaster.
“Very good,” the guildmaster smiled. “I have two jobs. You can take either or both, but they both need to be completed before tomorrow morning. If you agree to both and can’t pull them off or only pull off one, you’ll be looked down upon in the guild.”
In other words, Jace thought, I’ll lose faction with the thieves guild. Just great. “What are the jobs?”
“Good. Right to business,” he said approvingly. “The first job is a simple burglary. Colin Hackett has a house down on Wall Street, just south of the Temple district. It’s a big green house with yellow trim. Hard to miss. Colin owns a silver statue of Chykela and one of our clients would like it as her own. Break in, grab the statuette and get out. Anything else you find is all yours.”
Webley continued, “The second job is a little trickier. One of the merchants near the West Market, a one Myles Murrily, has been petitioning the guard to increase patrols around the markets to protect them from thieves. Obviously, this would affect us, so we need to eliminate the threat. What I want you to do is take these vials of Deadnettle and place them in his bottom desk drawer in his shop the Jolly Raven Book Shop, preferably where he won’t immediately find them. We’ll then drop an anonymous tip to the guard, they’ll find the Deadnettle and that will be that.”
Deadnettle was a rare, expensive, and very deadly herb. It was used almost exclusively by assassins. He knew, because he’d used it when he was playing Mordred, his vampyre assassin. It really increased his damage per second (DPS).
Because of its deadly properties, Deadnettle was outlawed in all major good faction cities and a fair number of the neutral ones. That also meant, if he was caught with it, he would spend weeks in jail. And since he couldn’t logout or create a new character, he would actually serve time in jail.
One the other hand, NPCs couldn’t access a player’s inventory except in very special situations - like their body decaying. He couldn’t be patted down or frisked by the guard so he should be safe. He hoped.
The fact was, he needed the money. But even more importantly, he needed to build
up faction in the guild if he wanted to ask for help getting in the Still, he needed to build up his faction with the thieves guild, so he might as well start now. He looked Webley in the eye and said, “I’ll take them both.”
Webley grinned broadly. “I thought you might.”
Webley the Snake has offered you the quest, “Love’s Likeness”
Reward: +25 faction with Whitecliff Thieves Guild, 25 gold, 1 piece of Thieves Guild Armor.
Accept quest? (Yes or No)
Webley the Snake has offered you the quest, “Silence the Squeaky Wheel”
Reward: +25 faction with Whitecliff Thieves Guild, 25 gold, 1 piece of Thieves Guild Armor.
Accept quest? (Yes or No)
Jace accepted both quests. “I’d better get going.”
“Remember,” Webley said as Jace stood up. “Both need to be done by morning.”
Quest “Love’s Likeness” Updated.
Time Limit: 5:00 hours
Quest “Silence the Squeaky Wheel” Updated.
Time Limit: 5:00 hours
Chapter 7
Jace left the guild through the Fainting Unicorn Tavern and quickly found Luna curled up on the same barrel. Unsurprisingly, she was sleeping.
“Time to go,” he told her mentally.
Luna opened up a single eye and glared at him for a long moment. Then she stood up and stretched and hopped down to follow him.
His first job was the simple snatch job. He just needed to break into a house and take a statuette. That sounded easy. Of course, he had no idea where the Temple District was. He asked a guard, claiming that he needed to get to the temple quickly because he’d just cheated on his wife with a cat-kin and needed to repent. After some snickering, the guards gave him directions.
He and Luna followed the directions and found the Temple District at the far end of the city. Once Jace got closer, it was easy to spot. The large stone temples stood out among the two-and-three-story Tudor homes and shops.
Veil Online - Book 2: An Epic LitRPG Adventure Page 4
