[https://www.tanyarochester.com/uploads/5/4/5/5/54553809/grace3_orig.png]

We walked, and half stumbled our way through the maze again to the cage.

Now that I examined the creatures again, they looked a bit like house cats made of shadow. I wanted to pet one.

“You think these were the rare ingredient that that letter was talking about?”

“No. I think these are trained monster pets who’ve lost their master for too long so they escaped. I think they’re hungry.” Lore took two portions of jerky from our rations and threw them into the cage. The cats devoured the meat as if it would disappear. As they ate, their bodies shrank until they reached the size of Maine Coones.

The fuck? I looked at Lore. Now I wonder if the Silvercat clan had an affinity with cats or if it was just Lore being so charismatic even panthers became tame in front of him.

“Was this was you saw in the chute?”

I stared at the cats and tried to reconcile what I saw back then.

“No. Definitely not. That other thing was like some sort of octopus.”

“Hmmm. Maybe that was the ingredient the letter mentioned.”

“Oh! Maybe. But it’s vanished off somewhere.”

Lore looked grim. “I think the couple who own this inn liked collecting shadow monsters as either pets, food, or both.”

“And you think the shadow monsters are killing off the guests?”

“Maybe, maybe not. But they’re likely responsible for some of the deaths. I doubt the mystery would be that easy. If it was, this place would have been cleared already.”

“Maybe we should search for clues about the history of this place then?”

He peered at me with a raised questioning brow.

“I mean, instead of focusing on other types of clues, try to focus on the content that is about the history of this place. Because if the answer isn’t about the owner and her husband then maybe it’s about something that happened in the inn's past. Why else would Whiterabbitsbane mention this place’s long history?”

“Perhaps, but he mostly told us a lot of unimportant facts.”

“That super creepy guy knows something. I can feel it. If we have the chance then we should absolutely talk to him.”

He sighed. “Sure. Now let’s go ahead and search this place.”

I grimaced and I peered around at the piles of junk. How could we find anything in this mess?

“Hey, while you two were talking about nonsense I found something.”

We turned to watch Eldin trot up to us wearing a big grin.

Thank fuck! “What did you find?”

“Another old safe.”

“Right, we need to go over the contents of the other one more, too.”

The thief took us to a thick pillar in the center of the room. It had carved decorations worn into illegibility. One of those decorations had lifted up exposing an open safe.

Eldin, appearing far too full of himself, gestured to where passive marks and papers overflowed and nearly spilled out.

Eldin Collected the marks since we had agreed to split anything we found, and then we passed out the papers from both safes to review them.

After a long while of skimming articles and contracts, I came across some interesting tidbits.

“Whoa. This whole area used to be limited to players level 40 and below. How did it lower to 30?”

Lore answered. “There are hidden administrators playing this sim. They’re always looking to improve things or upgrade areas for better playability. In the past, a lot of low-level players died too much to random high-level mobs. They would also party with higher leveled players to improve faster. Hundreds of years ago the PPVS admins decided to lower the highest level to decrease pointless deaths and discourage cheaters.” He frowned. “Now that I think about it, there should still be a few level 40 instances around here, but they shouldn’t be accessible to anyone unless they managed to find an environment bug of some kind.”

I blinked. “Hey, do you think you may have accidentally run into one of those when you received your harsh death penalty?”

“Possibly.” The tips of his ears turned red. "I tend to get a headache when I think about that place so..."

Ah, he looked too awkward and cute. But I had to focus on what was important. “What happened to all of the monsters above level 30?”

“All of them vanished from this area when the shift happened. I guess, they were moved to level 40 zones?”

“Oh, then it wouldn’t be this.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“What?”

I handed him an article about a level 40 Shadow Overlord getting sealed by the inn’s original owner back when it was being built.

“I thought it might have something to do with the deaths since it’s also a shadow creature like the ones we’ve encountered, but if level 40’s can’t exist here, then it was already taken care of by the level shift.”

“Unless it wasn’t.” Lore frowned. “The Passivity Precept might be omniscient, but its PPVS is far from perfect. That’s why there are always updates and changes to it.”

So it was just like any other MMORPG that had to go through trial and error and changed over time.

“Yeah, it’s pointless thinking about a sealed monster when the other possibility is an undead phantom,” Eldin said and handed me one of his articles. “There was a huge massacre of NPCs here several hundred years ago. I’ve only seen knowledge of this in this article here, meaning that all history in this outpost connected to the slaughter was removed from history. When something like that happens and is forgotten, the PPVS will sometimes create evil ghost-like terrors to remind people of the past.”

“Wait, ghosts exist in the PPVS?”

He grinned. “Ghost-like entities. You scared?”

A chill ran down my spine. Shadow creatures were already creepy enough. Now we might be dealing with ghosts?

Lore threw his papers into his inventory. “Come on. We should head to our next task before we run out of time.”

We quickly discovered the next hidden staircase that led up to the hallway next to our task area.

This office wasn’t like the small one in the kitchen. No, this one was about twice the size of the Crimsondahlia’s and even included a room off to the side with a bed for the person working late into the night to sleep in.

“So, how does your tool even work for something like this?”

“My tool for this room came with instructions.” Eldin irritably ran a hand through his hair. “We have to find the cog, or parts of a cog, then use the tool to finish the repair for us.”

“So we have to find a cog in here?”

“Yep. Mia, when I start the magi-machine, I want you to watch my back. Lore, it’s your turn to go search for things.”

“Maybe we should both watch your back,” Lore frowned. “This room looks peaceful, but, as you mentioned earlier, these tasks only get more dangerous.”

He chuckled. “I did have a point. That's fine too. But before I start to use the machine let's all search for the cog.”

“What should it look like?”

“I don’t know. Just look for something cog shaped.”

I rolled my eyes and started searching for round brassy objects. Huh?

“There.” I pointed to the bed. A huge broken cog was integrated within the decoration of the headboard and painted to blend in with the rest of it.

Eldin grimaced. “Isn’t that too big?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even tell where in the wall it should go since it is all just wooden panels.”

“I’ll search for the hidden compartment. Maybe when we open it, that will tell us more.” Lore started running his hands down the edges of the wood paneling.

I worked on detaching the broken cog from the bed. Since I hadn’t forgotten about the issue of destroying things, I grabbed the oversized screwdriver I found after looking in the nightstand drawer and undid the screws that held the various cog parts in place. Once I collected the last piece I set them all on top of the clean desk. Whoever used this office was more of a neat freak than the cooks in the kitchen.

Eldin said from underneath the desk, “I found another one!”

I admit that I jumped a little since I hadn’t seen him go under there. Seriously, how did he keep doing that?

He pulled out a copper cog that looked brand new and was way smaller than my broken one.

“Which is the right one, though?”

We stared down at our options.

“Okay, we have two possible cogs ready for installation. How is it going Lore?” I asked.

“Nothing so far.”

“This is taking too long, How about I activate the tool and let it take care of it?”

I frowned. “Do they work like that?”

Eldin shrugged. “I’ve only used the tool a few times and only on repairs I could see but, maybe?”

“I’d rather not risk it. Let’s help search the room instead of standing here being assholes.”

Eldin grinned and started to run his hands over the places in the wall that Lore hadn’t checked yet. I did the same from the opposite end.

We spent another five minutes until Lore reached a spot behind the desk. “Of course it would be here.” Then he did something with his hands and a section of wood paneling that had blended together perfectly popped out and swung open.

Inside the wall, a series of cogs and gears made of metal and crystal rested in place, as if they could start turning at any moment. Pipes similar to the ones coming out of the magi-machine earlier seemed to weave between sections of giant clockwork.

“Where is this complicated thing even missing a piece?”

Eldin shrugged and brought out a crystal device similar to the one Lore used earlier but with subtle differences.

“Hold on! Shouldn’t we place the cog in the right location first?”

“Nah, this is fine. These are short cuts after all. Mia, Lore, watch my back.”

Lore and I nodded.

A light scanned the room once then stopped. It took a second as if calculating then shined on the two cogs. They both melted down and flew into the wall. Then they started to reform a completely different cog. The machine even pulled Eldin over to the panel opening and forced him to stand there. Since I had stared for too long, I swiftly returned to guarding Eldin. I even looked above us and in the corners briefly.

But this was an office and not a dark basement. It was hard to take it seriously as a supposed dangerous location, more deadly than the place where shadow panthers chased us.

So, if we were suddenly attacked by something, the only place where we could actually defend ourselves would be the bedroom area. We could use the bed as some cover? Maybe? Or we should escape out to the hallway.

Something like a scream came from the wall. I shuddered. It probably wasn’t really a scream. The instructions did tell us to ignore them. Then I heard another.

The light coming from behind me dimmed and vanished.

“Is it finished?" I asked while I turned to look while Lore continued to guard.

Congratulations! Your team has finished the fourth repair task in record time! You have 1.5 hours to start on your next repair task!

Damn, they decreased the time! Well, I guess that was only natural since this room was smaller and had less shit in it.

“Well, fuck me,” Eldin whispered.

“What?”

A hundred or so blood tentacles suddenly burst from the machine wrapped around Eldin and pulled him in. It was so sudden and shocking that I couldn’t stop it even if I’d wanted to. Instead, I backed the fuck up.

“Lore!”

I pointed, my hand shaking. Shit. I was having trouble remembering the person who just disappeared.

“What happened? Where’s...?”

“They... they. Were taken by the wall tentacles!”

He started to get closer to the hole in the wall. “Get away from there!”

“I’m trying to investigate what killed them.”

I crept closer, keeping my eyes wide open. As Lore neared the hole, my heart pounded in my head.

“I want to know," he said, "if the inn itself is killing people.”

A sneaky thread of red that I hadn’t noticed earlier had wrapped itself around Lore’s hand. It pulled him toward the wall.

He paled.

Shit! I lunged, grabbing hold of his wrist, as more of those things wrapped around his body and now mine. I was going to lose him if I didn’t do something. Using my go-to escape plan, I teleported us out of the office and into the hallway outside. When I peered back an invisible force stopped the blood tentacles at the doorway. They slithered up the forcefield or tried to drill through it, intent on not letting us escape.

Unconsciously, I took several steps back. I did not want to go to the next task if it was going to be worse than this. But we had to.