Bonifacius, John and Foxly sprinted through the twisting tunnels of the massive underground crypt.

In Bonifacius’ hand was a torch, giving his group the ability to see in the dark.

An orb of light followed Foxly, it was one of his abilities, [Seal of Light].

JohnWillStab noticed a small, bipedal creature run past him.

“Huh?!”

Again, John noticed a group of two or three bipedal creatures the silhouettes of which ran around the group.

“JohnWillStab: WHAT THE F#*K ARE THOSE?!” he demanded, seeing the small, monkey like creatures running after them with spears and clubs.

They were short, about the same height as frogpeople, in other words, perfectly kickable.

Their fur ranged from grey, brown and white, to black, green and violet.

Their eyes were red and could be seen glowing in the dark, like the eyes of a raccoon.

“Bonifacius: They are known as ‘Crypt Fiends’, they typically settle in ruins!”

Foxly nodded.

“XxFoxlyxX: Some guilds treat them like mascots!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Once a guild got one of their members to put on a big crypt fiend costume for a PVP tournament!” he laughed.

“JohnWillStab: Huh… they seem… less intimidating now…” John remarked upon hearing Foxly’s story.

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, if you use the kick ability on them, it’ll send them flying! The same effect is applied to all small monsters,” Foxly explained.

He glanced back and saw that they were all level ten and above.

“JohnWillStab: NEVER F#*KING MIND! I’M INTIMIDATED!”

John was still only level six.

“Bonifacius: Do not be, friend! We will not have a problem slaying them if such an occasion was to take place!”

XxFoxlyxX reached for a piece of paper from a small card-box on his hip.

He cast [Seal of Fire] and threw the paper at the enemies, causing it to ignite.

A small burst of fire burned more than a dozen of the creatures to ash and bones.

Foxly smiled smugly.

“XxFoxlyxX: Yes, fear not, John!” he laughed.

From the smoke and fire charged even more crypt fiends.

There were dozens of them.

“JohnWillStab: YOU JUST PISSED THEM OFF!” John cried frantically.

The group began running down the hall, glancing back to see the incoming army of crypt fiends.

“XxFoxlyxX: Relax, me and Bonifacius are both level 100,” he shrugged.

JohnWillStab breathed a sigh of relief.

“JohnWillStab: Oh yeah, I forgot…” he replied.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

“JohnWillStab: By the way where exactly is the ghost fish?” John asked.

Bonifacius opened his map seeing a large reservoir of water below their exact location.

Bonifacius smiled.

“Bonifacius: Tis a water reservoir, we’re close!”

John was too busy spamming the “/scream” emote to reply.

Bonifacius ran right into the reservoir while John was focused on the monsters behind them.

They crashed right into the small lake with a splash, a result of very advanced water simulations.

First, XxFoxlyxX resurfaced, with him the orb of light.

“XxFoxlyxX: Watch where you’re going!” he exclaimed.

Bonifacius appeared next, thanks to his strength stat, he could swim with the ungodly heavy armour.

“Bonifacius: My apologies, I should have watched my step!” he laughed.

A few seconds passed and JohnWillStab never resurfaced.

“XxFoxlyxX: John?”

“JohnWillStab: I think my game’s broken… My screen is just pitch black...”

Realising the issue, Bonifacius began to type.

“Bonifacius: Thou needs to repeatedly click the space bar, undead cannot passively float like other races!” he explained.

After a few seconds, JohnWillStab appeared, his head poked through the surface of the water, covered in algae.

“JohnWillStab: Thanks!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Alright, where’s the fish?” he asked.

Bonifacius scratched his head.

He read over the quest text again and made no new discoveries.

“Bonifacius: It would seem we must find out ourselves!” he replied.

John and Foxly breathed a sigh.

The group swam around the cave seeing no sign of any regular fish, let alone a ghost-fish.

After twenty minutes of searching, Foxly and Bonifacius floated uncertainly, unsure if they did something wrong or if the quest was broken.

JohnWillStab’s thumb was actually in great agony, he was tapping the space key for so long he would probably be capable of lifting weights with it by the end of the day.

Either that or it’d fall off.

Desperately, JohnWillStab came up with another idea.

“JohnWillStab: I have an idea!” he announced.

“JohnWillStab: It’s a ghost fish, right?”

Foxly and Bonifacius nodded.

“JohnWillStab: And I have a ghost cat, right?” he continued.

Bonifacius nodded.

“JohnWillStab: What if the cat, can find the fish?” John presented his hypothesis.

“Bonifacius: I see… perhaps…!” he wasn’t convinced.

“XxFoxlyxX: …John… we don’t have to finish this quest, you know…”

John gritted his teeth.

“JohnWillStab: DON’T PITY ME!”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“XxFoxlyxX: I’m not pitying you, I’m just… really sad when I look at you…” he explained.

Bonifacius nodded discretely.

“JohnWillStab: YOU’LL SEE!” John exclaimed teary eyed, mostly because his thumb was making funny noises when it moved.

From John’s sleeve appeared Arachnophobia.

She looked around and immediately climbed onto his head as if he was a raft.

“JohnWillStab: Alright, cat! Help me out!” John explained.

Foxly and Bonifacius uncomfortably watched John talk to a virtual cat with expressions of concern.

John grabbed the cat and let go of his space bar.

“Meow… … … ... Meow… … … …”

The cat meowed.

“Sorry, cat!”

JohnWillStab sank deeper and deeper until he eventually hit the bottom of the reservoir.

“Meow… … … Meow… … .. ”

“I doubt this’ll work, but at least I can stop spamming the space bar”

He walked around a bit.

“Meow… … Meow… …”

JohnWillStab raised an eyebrow.

He took a few steps back.

“Meow… … … ... Meow… … … …”

Then he walked forward for a few seconds.

“Meow… … Meow… …”

“Meow… Meow…”

“Meow! Meow! Meow!”

Moments later John spotted the thin, see-through body of a ghost-fish swim centimetres from his face.

JohnWillStab thought he was having a stroke when the realization his cat was a metal-detector for ghost-fish struck him.

JohnWillStab moved his mouse over to the fish, he selected it, but every time he tried to catch it with the “/pickup” command it would just squirm away and escape.

JohnWillStab swam up to the surface and explained what happened.

“XxFoxlyxX: Oh, so you’re not going insane! You should have just said you have a tracker-pet from the start!”

“JohnWillStab: a tracker pet?” he questioned.

“Bonifacius: A pet can be given on of a range of abilities, for example tracking targets!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Yeah, if you right-click on your pet you should see a small menu of trackable items,“ Foxly explained.

“The cat did have the ability to track down the big-ass spider and its antivenom… guess I should have checked if it had any cool powers…” John thought.

He right clicked on Arachnophobia and saw a drop-down menu of trackable items.

“Bonifacius,”

“XxFoxlyxX,”

“Cider Slimes,”

“Spiders,”

“Ghost Fish,”

There were a few more.

“JohnWillStab: Woah, how does it decide what items I can track?” he asked.

“XxFoxlyxX: Plot convenience.” he explained.

John pretended not to hear that.

“JohnWillStab: Still, I can’t grab the fish, it keeps escaping…” John replied.

Bonifacius nodded.

“Bonifacius: Ghost-fish are well known for their strength as well as their slippery bodies, thou will need a moderate amount of strength, speed or dexterity!”

JohnWillStab scratched his head.

He was lost in thought trying to figure out a solution to the problem when it finally hit him.

“JohnWillStab: I’ll kick it!” he exclaimed.

“XxFoxlyxX: …”

“XxFoxlyxX: What?”

“JohnWillStab: You said it earlier, the crypt-fiends are kickable because of their size, I bet I could kick the fish up to the surface!”

Bonifacius and Foxly exchanged an uncertain look before nodding.

“Bonifacius: Thy plan may work, but how can we be certain the fish won’t swim down instantly?” he asked glancing down to the dark abyss below.

“JohnWillStab: I’ll try kicking it to the surface, as soon as you see it, use the charge spell to close the distance!”

XxFoxlyxX breathed a sigh.

“XxFoxlyxX: There is no way that’ll work… but knock yourselves out, I’ll look for a way out of here!”

“Bonifacius: I have faith in JohnWillStab’s planning abilities!”

“JohnWillStab: You are too precious for this world…” John remarked wiping a tear from his eye.

With that, he let go of the spacebar, Arachnophobia in hand they sank into the dark abyss below.

Like before he used the meow of his fish-detecting pet to find the location of his prey.

As the meows intensified, he knew he was getting close until eventually he saw the see-through form of the ethereal fish before him.

“AHA!”

He gritted his teeth as with the force of a professional football player he launched the fish through the water like a rocket, soaring through earth’s atmosphere.

With a splash, Bonifacius saw it, the see through fish with black, beady eyes and a system of white veins running through its body.

“Bonifacius: I GOT IT!” he exclaimed as he activated his charge spell launching himself over the surface of the water like a body-building Jesus, clad in platinum armour.

A few seconds later, JohnWillStab emerged onto the surface with a look of relief.

“JohnWillStab: Cool…”

He looked over to Bonifacius who was faced away from him.

XxFoxlyxX stared at him in horror.

“JohnWillStab: Bonifacius?” he asked anxiously.

Slowly, Bonifacius turned around covered in fish guts and milky white blood.

“Bonifacius: I BROKE THE FISH!” he exclaimed.

“Bonifacius: I apologise! I failed to deactivate the charge on time!”

A stream of apologies came from Bonifacius as JohnWillStab took a deep breath and let go of the space bar, sinking down into the dark abyss.

Upon performing the fish-kicking plan again, Bonifacius successfully caught the fish.

After a few seconds of struggling, it gave up and moved into Bonifacius’ inventory.

“Bonifacius: We did it!” he exclaimed as John once again emerged from the water covered in weeds and sludge.

“JohnWillStab: Nice!”

Once he made it to the surface Arachnophobia shot John an irate look.

“I think I pissed off my cat…”

John pat her on the heard with the “/pat” command.

“JohnWillStab: Relax, I’ll buy you some meat or something…?” he told the cat.

“JohnWillStab: What do cats eat?”

“My neighbour just gives them expensive ham… but he’s not the best role model…”

John looked over to his two allies for some advice.

“JohnWillStab: Cheese?”

XxFoxlyxX shrugged uncertainly.

“XxFoxlyxX: I think they just drink milk…”

“JohnWillStab: Then what is cat-food?” John asked.

“XxFoxlyxX: Spoiled chunky milk?”

“JohnWillStab: That does make sense…” he replied.

Arachnophobia looked at both of them with a look of horror.

“Bonifacius: Both of thee are quite the jesters! Naturally cats eat any kind of meat!” he laughed.

The cat breathed a sigh of relief.

“JohnWillStab: Ah, of course!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Meat! Of course!”

They both laughed nervously.

A few awkward seconds of silence passed as the trio floated around in the murky water.

“JohnWillStab: So, how do we get out?”

XxFoxlyxX shrugged.

“XxFoxlyxX: I couldn’t find any way out…” he replied with slumped shoulder.

They all glanced up seeing groups of crypt fiends patrolling the outside of the cylindrical reservoir.

JohnWillStab folded his arms as he tried to come up with a way out.

“JohnWillStab: What if I kick XxFoxlyxX up?”

“XxFoxlyxX: I WOULD PREFER IF YOU DIDN’T!”

“JohnWillStab: Fine…”

After a few more seconds of contemplation he came up with another idea.

“JohnWillStab: I know, what if Bonifacius uses the charge skill to run up to one of those crypt fiends?”

John looked to Bonifacius.

“JohnWillStab: You can carry two people at a time, right?” John asked.

Bonifacius nodded.

“Bonifacius: Indeed!”

Bonifacius breathed a sigh.

“Bonifacius: However, my two charge abilities are both medium-ranged, I cannot reach any of those crypt fiends…” he explained.

John and Foxly were both disheartened by this news.

Seeing his two let-down companions, Bonifacius tried to figure something out.

His face lit up as he came up with a new plan.

“Bonifacius: Perhaps I could gain the attention of some crypt fiends with my taunt spell! When they approach us, I may be able to charge at them!” Bonifacius speculated.

“JohnWillStab: Good idea!”

Bonifacius grabbed JohnWillStab and XxFoxlyxX under his arms, Arachnophobia returned to John’s sleeve.

He looked up and cast [Threatening Battle Cry] causing red ripples to spread throughout the underground structure, gaining the attention of every crypt fiend in a twenty-meter radius.

Bonifacius could see one of the hairy creatures begin its approach towards the reservoir.

Carefully he waited for the right moment to strike with his finger over the [Master Charge] ability.

Finally, the creature set one foot over the edge of the reservoir.

“Bonifacius: HERE I GO!” he exclaimed.

With a powerful burst of water, he began sprinting up the near ninety-degree walls of the reservoir.

Just as they were about to make it, the crypt fiend leapt into the hole.

Before Bonifacius could cancel the charge, he already jumped off the walls and towards the falling monster.

They landed back in the water with a loud splash.

As Bonifacius, John and Foxly resurfaced seconds later, they heard the sound of two dozen more crypt fiends falling to the water, one after another.

They flailed around for a few seconds before dying.

“JohnWillStab: S#*t…”

John breathed a sigh and approached one of the corpses, he used the “/pickup” command to grab two of the buoyant bodies, they served like inflatable pool toys.

He looked up in defeat.

“JohnWillStab: I think we might be stuck…”

“Bonifacius: Perhaps if we ask in global chat for help, somebody will come and aid us?” he wondered.

Foxly felt a chill run down his spine.

“XxFoxlyxX: GOD NO! Those psychopaths will pour piranhas into the water or something!”

Bonifacius smiled and placed a reassuring hand on Foxly’s shoulder.

“Bonifacius: Have some faith in your fellow players, friend!”

“XxFoxlyxX: Trust me, it’s a bad idea! You agree, right, John?!” Foxly turned to JohnWillStab, he was staring off into space.

He was lost in thought.

“JohnWillStab: I do know one hypothetical way out…” he began.

“XxFoxlyxX: Drowning?” Foxly asked.

“XxFoxlyxX: Oh, shit, I forgot you can’t drown! Sorry!”

JohnWillStab shook his head.

“JohnWillStab: I still have that one ticket from the cheater…” John began.

He opened his inventory and saw the item ♛ gave to him before.

“Bonifacius: Perhaps… though, while I understand and support their decision, perhaps allying with a notorious cheater is not the wisest course of action…” he suggested.

“XxFoxlyxX: I wouldn’t worry; for a cheater who leaves a business card, this game is also a money-earning simulator, they wouldn’t screw over their clients,” Foxly explained.

“XxFoxlyxX: Probably, I mean there’s a chance they aren’t after money, but that’s unlikely…” he added.

Bonifacius nodded uncertainly.

“Bonifacius: I suppose thou would know more about the business side of this world than I…” he remarked.

“JohnWillStab: Right…” after all this talk, JohnWillStab was getting pretty nervous himself.

“Bonifacius: Fear not, whatever thou choose, we shall support thy decision and face the consequences together!”

XxFoxlyxX gave Bonifacius a questioning look.

“We?” he thought.

JohnWillStab took a deep breathed as he activated the item in his inventory.

“???: Thank you for using the ♛ cheating service, due to recent anti-cheat risks I will not be teleporting to you, instead I will manually travel to you, the ETA is: 12 minutes and 32 seconds!”