239 Scattered
Rawrr!
“Oh damn, that’s why I prefer dogs over cats. Let me get close to you, naughty cat!” Alice–Spyro flew up to the giant cat. However, she was surprised by the cat because it kept attacking her with its claws countless times. Alice really wanted to attack the cat back, but Hiro seemed to have realized her intention. The man then stopped her before she could do anything.
“Monic, it’s okay. She will not hurt you.” Liberty tried to calm her cat down.
“It looks like it’s going to be a very long time.” Hiro sighed feeling that he would be stuck there longer.
“Alice, I’ll leave the cat to you. I have to read more about our condition. I also have to study this chaotic artificial world before making a decision.”
Hiro walked away a bit to get the peace he needed right now. Just as he opened the new manual book again, a notification popped up through his HUD system.
Ding!
[MyPhantom is now your friend]
Hiro immediately contacted Cara using a direct dial without waiting for a second, and the girl picked up the call right away.
“Hello-“
“Cara! Where are you? Are you alright?”
“Uhm, Nightfall. I thought that you were dead by now. But look at you, calling me and worrying like a mother losing his child in the park or something.”
Hiro arched an eyebrow suspiciously. The girl babbled as if she was very drunk.
“Where are you? Can you share your location?” Hiro had checked again the friendlist feature, but it looked like some feature had been removed, such as information on where the player’s current location was. The feature that had really helped him so far, they deleted it.
“Well… I am afraid that I can’t do that right now. I mean. I don’t even know how to do that?”
“Just do like a norm–”
It disappeared. Even the feature for sharing the current location that Hiro was looking for didn’t exist anymore. It was the same with the information on the current location of the player. Everything had been deleted. “Damn it!”
“All right, can you describe the place where you are at right now? Maybe I will recognize something.” Hiro still hadn’t given up. Even though it would be very troublesome, he still needed to gather the others.
“Anyway, where are the others? Tell me if you stay with them or one of them.”
“Nope. Only me and some random guys who are busy beating strange-shaped monsters. They have even killed most of them!” Cara screamed, as if she couldn’t believe what she had said.
Her words made Hiro a little confused. “Who do you mean by those who kill and those who are killed, Cara?”
“The monsters, of course. They are much stronger than those random yet narcissistic guys.”
Hearing the words that Cara had just said made Hiro’s body stiffen. If those players had been killed by the enhanced monsters, then it meant they were … really dead?
“Cara, stay away from those monsters. Hide yourself in the cave or home or something. Don’t try to fight any of them. Do you understand what I said?” Hiro suddenly turned very protective.
“Why? What happened?”
“Cara, maybe it’s really hard to believe this, but please, you have to trust me. If you get killed in this game, you will never be revived here nor in another world that we called home!” Hiro lowered his voice for fear of drawing the monsters closer.
Cara didn’t respond directly. She tried to grasp what Hiro had just said. Then, she swallowed her own saliva with difficulty. She looked back very carefully, checking that she was still safe behind the fallen tree.
“You are kidding, right?” Of course, she couldn’t immediately believe it. Just how could that be possible? Dying in the game meant dying in the real world? Cara still could not imagine how it worked. But, even though Hiro’s words sounded doubtful, her small heart believed in the man. Hiro wasn’t someone who would lie for something serious like this.
“I’m not. Okay. Just do what I said and send me the description of your hideout later. I will find you and the others. I promise.”
Ding!
[Wheelie is now your friend]
“Cara! Cara! Listen to me, I will call Wheelie and ask the same thing like I asked you. Please be careful.”
Beep!
Hiro contacted Wheelie right away. In contrast to Cara who was very relaxed about everything, Wheelie sounded like she was sobbing heavily in fear. Besides, the girl said that she was hiding in an empty cave alone. Hiro asked the girl not to go anywhere, and he promised to look for her because there was nothing else he could do other than looking for his friends right now.
After receiving two pieces of information about his comrade, Hiro still couldn’t calm himself. He even felt more restless. He couldn’t let everyone be in danger. Not after knowing that all of this was his brother’s plan. “Yuujin, you are–”
“It worked!” Liberty shouted with joy and clapped her hands.
Hiro was curious about what had just happened, so he ran over to Liberty. He could see that the dragon had managed to approach the giant Maine Coon Cat, and the two pets were pressed against each other’s foreheads right now.
“What did they do?” Hiro asked Liberty. The girl looked more cheerful than before.
“The dragon tried to contact Ace.” Liberty looked at Hiro with an excited look.
“By a pet? How does that even work?”
“I don’t know, but I trust him.”
“It’s her, not him.”
“B–but your dragon is a male, isn’t it?”
“Well, in that case, yes, it is a male. But the voice you heard, it was a female, a woman. Her name is Alice. And she is the reason why I can meet you in the Closed Beta Test.”
Liberty didn’t have time to say anything when suddenly a very elegant female voice came out of the giant cat, greeting Liberty with a typical greeting that only Hiro and Ace use.
“Libe, oh my– are you all right?”
“Uhm, Ace? Is that really you? B-but why did your voice sound like granny?”
Hiro glanced at Alice. The girl had already raised her dragon head arrogantly. She had just done something that was beyond Hiro’s line of reasoning.
“What did you do?”
“Well, I told you that I know everything. I just need to copy my third app and insert it into the AI of Monica. The next thing that I need is Ace’s player ID so I can connect to his VR machine and make a call.”