Of course, immediately after saying that we should begin the operation I realised there were even more problems. These were mostly my fault, I had completely forgotten about the video of me accosting the other player in the street in all the excitement and had to explain that to everyone which was rather embarrassing and a bit difficult as the NPC’s didn’t really understand how easy it was to find information back in the real world.

“Hmm, well I think we have something that can help with that,” Harmon replied after I had finished awkwardly explaining the problem. He looked mildly surprised, but I wasn’t sure whether that was because this was something that they had to worry about on top of everything else or because I had forgotten about it.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Harmon said as he left the room patting me on the shoulder as he passed.

As he left, I turned to look at Tylie again noting that she was wearing more jewellery than most of the village women I had seen walking around the town, nothing that would attract too much attention, just a copper chain with some sort of ornament on the end and a couple of bangles, but certainly more than the single ring that most women I had seen wore out on the street.

“I take it your jewellery increases your stats in some way?” I asked hopefully and to my great relief Tylie nodded.

“Yeah they’re mostly small increases to my Dexterity and Agility, but I made sure to add a couple Strength increases as well, I also have a couple of daggers hidden on my person, so you don’t need to worry about me,” she replied.

That was good to know but if anything went wrong, I would still be going in guns blazing or rather Naginata swinging. We still didn’t know what was going to happen when we got to the inn, not even if they were going to take the bait which was the thing this entire operation depended on or how good this person or group of people were. I really wanted it to be only one person doing these things but the more I thought about it the less likely it seemed, which was both a depressing and worrying thought.

As I thought this Harmon rushed back into the room holding a small ring in his hand that he thrust towards me excitedly.

“This is a Glamor Ring,” he explained as I took it carefully from his hand. “All it does is give you the ability to change your appearance, so it’s not very useful to most people but it’s perfect for our needs.”

Quickly I examined the intriguing item that I had been given.

Glamor Ring

Item Tier (Rarity): Masterwork (Rare)

Required Level: N/A

Core Slots: 1 Support Core (Locked)

This ring is a special item designed for the sole purpose of allowing a person to disguise themselves. It is illegal for those who are not members of the guards or other law enforcement groups to own these rings for obvious reasons.

Other than the slightly irritating description it seemed like a very useful item indeed. I could see many uses for disguising myself both ones that could be considered legitimate and ones that most definitely weren’t, which at least made the description make sense as far of the legality of owning these went but that last bit still made me hesitate slightly.

“Are you sure it’s alright for me to take this?” I asked.

“Well if you don’t return it, you’ll have a problem,” Harmon admitted glancing at the captain who nodded firmly. “But until you do something that means we can no longer trust you, we’ll support you as well as we can. That’s something that’s to our benefit after all. And if we ever have another job for you that requires you to disguise yourself you can just borrow it again.”

I nodded thoughtfully at this, noting not only that Harmon seemed to have a lot of confidence in me but that the were thinking about working with me again in the future.

“Soul Cores that allow someone to use the Glamor Spell are unavailable for purchase for the average citizen and as soon as one is made, they are bound into a ring specifically made to contain them and prevent them from being used by people who shouldn’t have access to them,” the captain rumbled. “Even the recipe for making the Cores is considered forbidden information to all but the most trusted of Soul Crafters.”

“Besides these rings only have a certain number of charges before they break and even if you use glamor again you will change into the same form as the first time even if you use a different ring, don’t ask me why that’s how they work because I don’t know” Harmon shrugged. “But in any case, even if you did try to steal it, we could find you easily enough.”

I whistled slightly, that was an impressive list of restrictions that these items had but there was no denying that it fit our purposes. In fact, I almost wondered if this item had been added in for me by whatever AI was controlling this quest on the fly or something that was specifically added for infiltration type quests.

“The second one,” Katy told me, causing me to jump slightly in surprise as her voice suddenly echoed inside my head, it was unusual for her to interrupt in situations like this.

‘Sorry for surprising you,” she apologised quickly. “But I thought you were just going to ask me anyway.”

“I was,” I admitted using a silent method of communicating this time in the hopes of avoiding too many odd looks but a quick glance at everyone else told me that they were just wondering why I had suddenly gone silent. It seems that Katy was already getting used to the way I sometimes let my curiosity get away from me, which was both cool and slightly creepy at the same time.

“Thanks Katy.”

“No problem.”

“Sorry about that,” I said unable to look anyone in the eye, it was actually a little annoying that I was the only one who could hear what katy was saying to me and I resolved once more to earn enough money that I could pay for her to join me in game.

My natural curiosity was one of the reasons that people had problems with me back home, when I was interested in something, I stopped paying attention to the world around me which pissed a lot of people off and having Katy be able to explain things to me when I started wondering about them was only exacerbating the problem.

“Were you conversing with your spirit?” Harmon asked.

“Huh!?” I started at the sudden question looking up to see interest in their eyes rather than the irritation that I was expecting. “Uhh, yeah she was just explaining something to me about the ring.”

“It must be weird having someone inside your head like that,” Tylie muttered making me smirk slightly.

“It was certainly odd at first,” I admitted. “But I’m starting to get used to it. It helps that she gives me good advice.”

When she’s not being a brat anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Harmon said looking a little confused. “She?”

“Ah, my spirits name is Katy,” I explained. “I’ll happily explain more and hopefully even let you meet her at a later date, but we have a job to do right now.”

“Yes, that’s probably a good idea,” admitted Harmon sheepishly.

It was obvious that he wanted to continue the conversation, but we’d already wasted enough time. It was already mid-afternoon which meant that people wold be starting to trickle back into town after spending most of the day hunting and I briefly lamented the time that had disappeared on me. It was going to be difficult to catch up. But no this was more important right now and I had already received a good reward for helping them out with punishing criminal players so catching the people responsible for what was happening to the girl at the inn would actually receive a punishment that stopped them doing anything like this again and hopefully make others who were considering similar actions that it was a bad idea to break the law just because they were immortal.

“Alright then I guess I should activate this ring, right?”

“Yeah.”

Activating the ring caused my spirit pool to be decreased by 50% for the duration of use and once I dispelled the glamor it couldn’t be used again for 24 hours.

“Uh, so how do I look?”

“Well, for one thing you’re blonde now,” Harmon said cocking his head to one side as he examined me.

“Yeah, I don’t think that anyone will realise that its you when you look like that,” Tylie said with a nod.

“Looks like we’re finally all sorted,” she continued standing up and stretching briefly. “We should get going. I want to get this over with a soon as possible.”

I chose not to take that personally as I stood up and quickly bid the other two men goodbye before following my temporary partner out the door.

“So, I’ll sit at the bar for a bit first and try and narrow down the list of subjects,” I said rubbing the back of my head as I glanced sideways at Tylie. “I’m guessing you’re going to be wandering around the floor pretending to be a waitress, right?”

“Yeah,” Tylie nodded as she led the way out the main gate and down the street towards the inn.

“The I’ll pay special attention to what happens when you are out on the floor, if anyone whose wearing anything that looks out of place and is acting oddly around you, I’ll be able to see it, I told her.

This was one of the things that my natural curiosity made me good at, so long as I was interested in something, I would see details that most people would just ignore, and I was very interested in what was happening at that inn.

Tylie gave me an odd look before nodding, “Right, well we’d better make our own way to the inn from here, we don’t want to be seen together by anyone who’s going to be at the inn, in fact we’re actually cutting it pretty close as it is.”

“Right,” I said purposefully ignoring her as we broke away from each other and started heading down another street on my way to the inn.

Once inside I walked up to the bar and ordered a beer noting that the innkeeper was giving me a wary look as I did so and glanced at my image in the mirror behind the bar. Thankfully I did so before taking a mouthful of my beer or I’d have made a mess.

The person staring back at me from the mirror was so different from the avatar that I had chosen for myself that it was hard even for me to realise that it was me. Even with other people telling me that I looked very different from normal hadn’t been enough to prepare me for the changes. Harmon had told me that I was blonde, but personally I wasn’t sure that I would call such a dirty looking colour ‘blonde’ myself. In fact, it looked more like a really threadbare old mop that had been tied into a ponytail was sitting on top of my head. My face wasn’t much better, I don’t exactly have a massive amount of confidence in my looks, but I was definitely better looking than the person staring back at me from the mirror. Shifty-looking eyes the colour of dirty water squinted at me over a nose that was far too big for the rest of the face which also had a thin pair of thin lips set over a weak chin. In all honesty I looked more like a villain now than I did in the video that was making the round on the web which explained the cautious looks I was receiving from both the innkeeper and most of the customers.

Speaking of the customers using the mirror I quickly scoped out a couple of groups of players. Apparently fighting the monsters in this game was difficult enough that most people had only bought a couple of new pieces of gear were still mostly using their starter equipment which was a good thing due to the difficulties of telling the difference between a player and an NPC.

The first group looked quite happy and had a few different pieces of gear so I guessed that they had had a good day hunting and had decided to come back to town a bit early to celebrate and the second looked like they had been here all day or hadn’t had much luck, the whole table was still in their starter gear and were glaring at the party table but neither seemed like likely culprits.

I was still early in the day though, so I was expecting that more players would start to turn up as the afternoon wore on and settled in for a long wait. About 10 minutes in Tylie finally came out from the back room and I casually glanced at her as she passed once again struck by how much like a normal girl she seemed right now and quickly schooled my face into the same expression that I had before she walked into the room; tired and slightly depressed which I felt best fit my current appearance, especially since the only thing that I was wearing that wasn’t starter gear was the shoes that I had bought the other day making me look like a poor solo player.

As the afternoon slowly became evening it became harder and harder to tell the difference between the NPCs and the players as they walked in because as one might expect those players that had chosen to stay out later had been able to afford to buy better gear than those who had come back early but most of them still had the same shirt that they started with then I suddenly started wondering whether any of them had their AI companions with them. That was actually a disturbing thought Katy was with me because our personalities matched up so what would an AI that had partnered with some sort of sexual predator be like?

I shuddered briefly before turning my attention back to the customers, there were a couple of groups that I had decided were locals, some of them seemed to know Tylie but were acting like she worked here making me wonder if they were off duty guards who had been asked to help us out or just villagers who knew that her being here meant that something was up and were just trying to help out.

But from the looks several tables were receiving from these NPCs they were players and one in the corner caught my eye, there were three men seated at the table and they were all talking to each other while keeping an eye on Tylie, that wasn’t very unusual, she was quite an attractive young lady but I noticed that Milly, who had joined Tylie waiting on tables as the inn got busier was avoiding them and flinching whenever their gazes passed over her.

Really could these guys be any more obvious if they actually tried? Even some of the other players were giving them odd looks and I shook my head in exasperation. What a bunch of amateurs.

Tylie wandered past me and I turned my head towards her.

“Hey, I’d like to make an order.”

“Of course, sir,” she replied catching on to what I was doing and coming closer.

“What would you like?” she asked clearly as she leaned towards me in a manner that might seem slightly flirtatious to outsiders but would allow us to converse without being overheard. “You noticed?”

“Yeah, if it’s not them, I’ll eat my spellglove,” I muttered. Finding likely culprits had been so easy that I was getting nervous, it was usually about now that things started to go wrong.

“So, to avoid any more suspicion bring me something cheap and simple to eat,” I told her. “And I’ll follow them when they leave, if we’re lucky they might even think I want to join them.”

She looked at me sharply at that statement, but we didn’t have time for me to explain what I meant by that, but she would figure it out soon enough.

“Also sorry about this,” I said bring my hand round to smack her on the ass causing to yelp as she leapt into the air. Her face turned crimson as she turned back to glare at my smirking face and for a moment I wondered if she was going to slap me. In all honesty I wouldn’t have blamed her, but this was the easiest way I could come up with to explain why we had been talking in secret.

I gave her a wink as she turned around stiffly and stormed off to the laughter of most of the other customers who probably thought that something had been going on between us and I had just messed up. I had to admit they were probably half right because I was sure that I had in fact messed up and Rylie was probably going to make me pay for it later.

The I noticed that the players at the table we were sure were the culprits were sizing me up and internally celebrated. If they thought that I was even a little bit like them it would be safer for Tylie when she made her move. Of course, there was also a chance that they would consider a rival but at least then they wouldn’t suspect me of working with the guards.

Not long after this a still fuming Tylie returned with a small bowl and some bread that she slammed down in front of me and stormed off before I could say anything to her much to the continued amusement of the other customers in the bar, but I just shrugged.

Inside the bowl was a thin but tasty soup and the bread was excellent, but the small portion just wasn’t very filling, and I sighed despondently as I looked at the food some of the other tables were eating before putting a couple of coins on the bar which quickly disappeared as the bartender walked past.

Later that night most of the tables were empty and the one in the corner looked like they were getting ready to turn in for the night and Tylie wandered over to their table to clear the dishes away. The players tried to be casual about this, but it was obvious to me that they were watching her every move and she smiled at them and walked away.

The players all glanced at each other before making their way upstairs. I finished my beer slowly, if I went upstairs to quickly after them it would look like I was following them. Besides I knew that Tylie would be paying close attention to what they were doing, I just had to keep an ear out for anything unusual.

As the last few drops of my drink flowed down my throat the bartender sidled up to me with a nervous expression.

“Excuse me sir,” he started looking around the room at the few stragglers nervously. “But you’re the same man from this morning, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I know it’s a little hard to believe when I look like this but I’m wearing an item that allows me to change my features.”

“Thank goodness!” the man replied making me blink in surprise.

“Tylie explained the situation earlier but its hard to be sure sometimes, but though you look different your mannerisms are the same and your voice is similar enough that I can believe it’s you,” he explained seeing the surprised look on my face. I had thought I was doing a pretty good job acting like someone else, so it was a surprise that he had apparently seen through me so easily. “When you’ve worked in this industry for as long as I have you notice things like that.”

Oh yeah, that makes sense I guess, recognising customers would be important in his line of business, though it was still impressive that he recognised that much after only meeting me two times.

“But that’s not what’s important right now,” he continued quickly. “Tylie went upstairs a few minutes ago and she hasn’t come back down.

“Hmm, that could be what I’m waiting for,” I replied feeling a pit open in my stomach.

The plan was probably proceeding as planned, but in many ways that was just as bad as if it wasn’t. If something went wrong Tylie would end up in the same situation as he friend had, she had a lot more experience fighting in this world than a player would and I hoped that what equipment she still had equipped would be enough that she could still protect herself but I had been asked to make sure that nothing went wrong so I took a deep breath and stood up.

“Are there any rooms that are isolated enough that someone could hold a captive without attracting too much attention?” I asked quietly as I rose to my feet. If I was going to fight, I would have to deactivate the glamor that hid my avatars’ true face as I was pretty sure that getting into a fight with multiple enemies when I only had access to half of my Spirit was a bad idea especially considering that I had spent most of the day at the Guard barracks instead of fighting monsters like they probably had. Unfortunately, this would of course mean that they would be able to identify me, but it was still better than the alternative.

“Yes, there’s a storage room that we don’t really use that much a bit off the main corridor,” the barkeep replied quickly. “When this place was built the original owners were hopeful that Ponson was going to become an important trading hub but as I’m sure you’ve noticed that never really happened.”

Actually, it was more likely that the developers made it so that this inn would be large enough for when the players got here but I couldn’t tell him that, so I got directions to the storage room he had mentioned before heading upstairs instead.

After I got upstairs, I quickly checked that I was alone before dispelling the glamor, I was still annoyed that I couldn’t keep it up when I was fighting without crippling myself but at least this way I would still have a viable disguise if I had to do something like this again.

Grumbling to myself I continued down the shadowy hall towards the storage room which apparently behind the room of one of the players that had been seated at the table we had been keeping an eye on which basically meant that it had to be them and I was really hoping by now that Tylie was alright but those hopes were soon dashed as I heard a loud scream coming from ahead of me.

“Shit!” I hissed as I started to run in the direction of the storage room.

One of the players from the corner table was standing outside the room with a smirk on his face which was half turned towards the room.

“Are you ladies all right in there or do you need help with one little slut?” he chuckled as more shouts and loud noises rang out in the otherwise quiet hallway and upon hearing this my vision turned red.