Bent Cliff was the sort of place people went to to exchange stolen goods. Officially, the practice was against the law and everyone caught would receive a permanent account ban. All major publishers and developers had made it abundantly clear in all media statements, as well as their terms of service. Everyone on the net knew it was for show. Player exchange hubs continued to be tolerated by companies to the point that they became semi-legal.

On the surface, Bent Cliff was described as “a series of rooms in which players could engage in legal personal and intimate activities.” The game system made sure that all video and audio recording capabilities were disabled, ensuring not even the hackers or game admins would know what transactions took place. Naturally, there was a catch: the only way to enter a Bent Cliff zone was with an invite or an oracle token. As with most tokens, one could only be bought with real money.

Flicker wasn’t online when I entered Vesperia, and neither had he sent a Bent Cliff invitation. With the amount of money he flaunted on his character, I had expected him to be at least somewhat generous.

“Twinkle, buy me an oracle token,” I said as I opened my inventory. “And get me five more stamina potions.”

“Sure thing, Sarah!” My AI companion swirled around me. “You have a new mail from the university, reminding you to hand in your assignment in the next two days.”

“Mark it for me.” I would deal with that later. For the moment, I had to keep my focus on the game. “And search for some sleep shots. I need to be active for a week.”

“Oh, no!” Twinkle’s safety protocols kicked in. “It’s not healthy for you to stay awake for so long.”

One of these days, I was doing to spend the money to dismantle every childish aspect of Twinkle’s personality. Then again, if I had the money to begin with, I wouldn’t spend so much time awake anyway. I knew he’d still buy the meds. Not even rules stood in the way of profit. As long as I was informed—which meant suffering through a three minute warning about the effects of sleep deprivation—I could override almost any safeguard.

Precisely on the hour, FlickerFlacker logged on. I sent him a message, only to get a system response that the user had blocked me. So much for trying to get a free meeting.

“Twinkle, set up a stealth camera,” I said. “Log everything after I get out of the Cliff. Save the data to a free safe server.”

“Do you want me to link it to your stream? Your followers have increased by seven percent since you last logged on.”

Seven percent? That was an unhealthy amount of attention for doing nothing. I expected my Kalifax visit to get me a few trolls, though not that much.

“No.” I did a manual check of my feeds. None of them were on. “No logging until the quest is over. Did you buy me a token?”

“I’m still waiting for the online auction to expire. We are in the lead and—“

“How much is the buy now price?” I didn’t feel like waiting.

“Fifteen for a single token, twenty five for three.” Twinkle smiled widely, as if he were doing me a favor.

“Buy three.” I opened a world map window. “And let me know if anyone pings my accounts.”

I teleported to Bent Cliff. The jingling of new items filling my inventory mixed with the ethereal sound effects accompanying the fast travel functionality of the game. If there was one thing that Vesperia was really good at, it was sound. If they could get the graphic quality of Marble Mystery II, it might even become a game worth playing.

Not a single character was present at my new location—nothing but cliffs as far as the eye could see. Not the worst place to be if someone wanted to be alone. All that was missing was some Eurogoth music to make me feel sixteen again.

Unlike other parts of the game, this area was a stack of hundreds of single player instances. No matter how many players teleported here, it would remain empty, or so the description went. In reality, the player cap was likely to be ten thousand. I had come here several times when I was young, lured by curiosity and baseless game rumors. One of the popular myths I’d heard as a child claimed that on the stroke of midnight at a random day of the month, an NPC would appear and give a hidden quest to the first five people that spoke to it. I had spent seventeen nights sneaking up and logging on before I learned that the whole thing was a hoax. When my parents found out, they had blocked my net access for a day—the harshest punishment I remember them giving me.

I made my way through the forest of black rock shards sticking from the ground. The pattern was so obvious, it was painful. Thousands of razor-sharp rocks sticking up from the ground, all variations of two asset models. When I reached the one that had the number seventy-seven etched on it, I stopped.

Here goes…

I double-checked my mail, then put the oracle token on it. The sky turned green.

“Sarah?” a deep voice asked behind me.

“FlickerFlacker?” I looked around. There area was still empty, but Flicker’s character marker had appeared on my map.

“Yes,” the voice replied. “I just wanted to make sure you came alone.” He was using the standard character voice modification, making him sound like an orc with a distinctly British accent.

“That’s a bit paranoid.” I had my exit shortcut at the ready. “Don’t forget you came to me.” FlickerFlackerk’s marker moved slightly. “Look, the quest clock is running and neither of us have a lot of time.” And you have way less that me. “So cut the crap, okay?”

Judging by our past experience, there was the risk he might log off, leaving me to complete the quest alone. When his orc avatar appeared, I let out a mental sigh of relief. So far, so good. Flashing a wide smile, I took a step towards him.

“Hey.” I extended a hand in greeting. He stared at it for several seconds, before slowly taking it in a weak handshake. “So, you got the quest too?” Not my best introduction, but enough to break the ice. “Accident, or did you search for it?”

“I wanted to max out,” Flicker said. His hesitation made me think of my ethics TA. “At level ninety-five, I got a random event that told me there was a secret level one hundred.”

I had never received anything until I reached the final level. Or maybe I had and had ignored it along with the rest of my spam notifications. After the meeting, I was going to have Twinkle retrieve my Vesperia notifications and go through them manually.

“The event was weird. Much more difficult than the standard boss fights. I spent a few thousand to remain alive.” He referred to it so casually, as if we were talking about game currency. Must be nice to be rich. “When I beat it, I got the Scroll of Hidden Knowledge. All the hints were there.”

“Neat.” I definitely hadn’t received any scroll. Funny, the dark broker hadn’t mentioned this particular detail. “What did your scroll say?”

“The usual three hints: how to trigger the final trial boss, his weakness, and the first hint to the quest itself. What did your’s say?”

“Pretty much the same.” I didn’t flinch. “The boss’s weakness and two hints about the gateway.”

“Man!” Flicker slammed a nearby cliff with his fist. “You’re so lucky! You’re the only one I know who got two hints! I had to burn through three characters to get my second hint.”

“Oh?” I felt like I’d jumped down the rabbit hole only to find out it was a wormhole to nightmare land. Five minutes ago I was convinced I had all the available information on the matter. Instead, I found out I knew nothing at all. Hints? Special events? Other people? Everything suggested there was a community surrounding the quest and I didn’t even have a clue about it.

“The triggering happens at random. I had to buy new ninety-eight characters and try again. I tried buying a few ninety-four characters to get more Scrolls of Knowledge, but the random is really low. The third hint is almost always the same. I tried sixteen times before I managed to trigger the quest and got only three hints.”

“Didn’t you ask any of the others for help?” I feigned ignorance.

“Once, but I got my account hacked. After that, I hired a dark broker. It was thanks to her that I found you.”

That answered one mystery. I quickly sent a message to Claire requesting a second meeting. If there were other parties involved, I needed to know. The only issue was whether I’d be able to afford that information.

“Anyway, let's get down to it.” I changed the subject. “One of my clues says that there’s a hint in Lake Everwhite.”

“Already found that one.” He smiled. “And the one at the Sea of Sorrow. Each of them provides a line of a riddle. The dark broker said there are eight hints in total, but four are enough to find the location of the quest. Five to be sure.”

“The second is somewhere in Airmist.”

“Wow, really?” He sounded way too eager. “I went through there for a holiday event last month. Is it in the cathedral?”

“I’ll find it.” It was always better keeping some information on the side. “Know anything else?”

“Well, another hint should be in the Sylvan Forest, but that’s a large area. I tried asking on the forum for more, but no answer yet.”

And now there was a forum... Things just kept getting better and better.

“Let’s work with what we have. How much time do you have till your clock runs out?”

“Three days...” Flicker looked at the ground. “Mostly. I can’t skip school, so I’ve been a bit slow.”

“Not a lot.” Even if I did the impossible, there was no way I could devote more than six hours the rest of the week. “Can you buy a new character and trigger the quest again?”

“I… I’m not sure,” he hesitated. I could tell there was something he wasn’t telling me. For someone that had learned so much, Flicker was bad at keeping a straight face. If only I could be so lucky with my dark broker.

“Okay, let’s assume you can’t. That gives us roughly forty hours. How much can you play today?”

“A bit. I’m not supposed to be online today,” he looked away. “Forty minutes, maybe?”

“Family issues?” I tilted my head.

“No exactly. There’s something I—“

“If we’re going to do this, we have to go all in, Flicker.” Time to put up the pressure. “Three days isn’t a lot. We don’t even know what the final trial might be? What if there’s a boss to defeat? It could take days to figure out his behavior pattern. Remember, there aren’t any guides for this. We’re going in blind.” I paused a few seconds.

It was an obvious bluff. With his amount of money, he could afford to have a new character ready in a week and start the quest again. Of course, that ran the risk of receiving a game ban. Game companies were quite lax with their paying customers, but even they had their limits. If Flicker kept on buying new characters, he’d eventually receive an official warning from the game. Maybe he already had? Either way, I needed him on board. Unlike him, I couldn’t afford to level up a new character from scratch.

“Look.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “We can try to get this on our own, but chances are we’ll fail. Besides, it’s only a few days. It’s not like it’ll become a habit.” Not with this amount of time. “So what do you say?”

“I...” I watched the orc actually bite his lip. Ten years ago, I would have found that charming. “I really have to go. Sorry.” He disconnected.

I just stood there staring at the spot where he had been. A few seconds later, the game notification system went off, informing me I had received new messages. Flicker, apparently, had sent me all information relating to the hints. I was going to have to do this on my own, after all.