The Devil's Cage Chapter 105

[Entering Single Player Dungeon]

[Difficulty: Third Dungeon]

[Background: The city has experienced a couple of vicious animal attacks. As a reporter with a good reputation, you sense that there is a secret behind those attacks. Your boss does not agree with you though, so you need to prove your worth once again...]

[Main Mission: Discover the truth within two weeks.]

[Temporary language pack, Disappears upon exiting the dungeon.]

[Clothing, backpack, weapons, and other items remain unchanged, Temporarily altered appearance, Returns to normal upon exiting the dungeon]

[Hint: This is your third official dungeon. You can fail the Main Mission, but you will have to pay 300 Points as a penalty and your highest attributes will drop by one point. If your points are insufficient, the system will deduct from your equipment. If your equipment is insufficient, you will fail.]

...

After the blinding light disappeared, Kieran found himself in a small dark room.

His mind had been filled with memories of his new ident.i.ty in the dungeon, so it only took one look at the single bed and his messy surroundings for him to know where he was.

"I suppose this is my room?"

Kieran looked at his backpack on the bed. It had not changed much, except that there was also a camera next to it.

Kieran opened his backpack and checked whether all the items he had brought were there. His supplies, bullets and grenades were all intact.

Kieran picked up the camera and inspected it. It was nothing special. It was just a normal camera. The only attracting thing about it was its long lens, which looked kind of expensive.

"A reporter, huh?"

As he looked at the camera in his hand, Kieran could not help but laugh bitterly. This ident.i.ty was even more ridiculous than one he’d had in the previous dungeon.

The cell phone next to his pillow rang.

It was an old-fas.h.i.+oned cell phone that only made calls and received messages.

His memories told him that it was his although it looked very cheap compared to the camera.

Kieran picked up the phone and saw the caller ID. It was an unknown number, yet Kieran answered it without a second thought.

After three dungeons, including the newbie one, Kieran had mostly grasped the flow of the game.

At the beginning of each dungeon, there was always someone that introduced the players to the Main Mission.

That had been Colleen in the newbie dungeon, Hunter in the first dungeon, and Captain Ralph in the team dungeon.

Those three natives had triggered the Main Mission of each of the dungeons, the only difference being the difficulty, which resulted in different appearance and solving methods.

This phone call was obviously the trigger point for the Main Mission of this dungeon, or to be more accurate, the person who was making the call was.

"Yo, Mr. Great Reporter! The case you wanted to investigate has some new leads. Come on over so we can talk about our arrangement! The price you offered is not worthy of a big scoop like this!"

The voice on the other side of the line sounded eloquent. The person it belonged to seemed very confident about their att.i.tude and hang up the phone before Kieran could even react.

Kieran was not mad, though. Everything was progressing according to his expectations. The person who had called had indeed been the trigger of the Main Mission.

The man’s name was Larry, and he made a living by selling information to interested parties. Larry was good at what he did, and the credibility of his intel was impeccable, which was why he was Kieran’s best source.

In other words, Larry was Kieran’s informant.

According to the memories in Kieran’s brain, if Larry had sounded so confident on the phone, then that probably meant he was onto something big.

Kieran quickly searched for his wallet in the mess of his room.

...

The door of a small, ordinary laundromat in the back alley of Falcon Street opened.

The owner of the laundromat was a big, stout black man with an unfriendly face, who spoke in a mix of local and other accents.

The laundromat’s odd location in combination with the angry face of its owner were the reason business was not going well. Still, the laundromat managed to stay open.

People often wondered what kind of magic allowed it to stay in business.

Truth be told, the laundromat had been reported more than once by the locals, and the police had shown up several times. However, every time they came, they left empty-handed. There were never any drugs or illegal firearms hidden in the laundromat like people reported. The police officers that went there to investigate had become the station’s lunchtime joke.

After a couple of false alarms, no officers were willing to set foot in that place and stain their reputations anymore.

The place became even more famous after two incidents like that. The police had had rock-solid information about illegal business going on in the laundromat, but it had ended up being fake. The vicious owner had even sued the police station, and two chief officers had been suspended because of the fiasco.

Since then, the laundromat had became a no man’s land for the policemen.

All this had been orchestrated by the true owner of the laundromat, Larry.

The skinny man with the long, narrow face was sitting before Kieran with a cigarette in his hand, smoking leisurely.

The way he was sitting was very odd. He had one leg on top of the chair and the other coiled to the leg of the chair, looking more like a monkey than a normal human being.

"What’s the news? I’m not here to watch you smoke," Kieran got straight to the point.

Since he was an old customer, he could just head behind the shop and look for Larry.

Similarly, Larry was even more casual and crude around Kieran, who was one of his oldest customers.

"Give me the 10,000 first and then we’ll talk! You know I’m selling information for a living, mate, and I’ve got tons of mouths to feed! This is my only business, so I’m really short in cas.h.!.+"

Larry put up a pitiful expression, but it looked extremely fake. Even a child could tell that he was acting.

"10,000? Fine, but I’ll need some solid info to justify all that money!"

The wallet that Kieran had found in his messy house did not have that much money, but he still had some bank cards. The money in the bank was more than enough to cover Larry’s fee.

Kieran could pay that price as long as the information was worth it.

"It’s the witness I picked up near the crime scene. I’ve questioned him, and I’m sure the guy knows a lot more about the attack. On my honor!" Larry said with utmost confidence.

As an informant, his honor was his best bargaining chip.

WIthout his credibility and honor, he would be out of business in no time.

Kieran threw the bank card towards Larry, and Larry swiped it with a delighted expression. He picked up a piece of paper, wrote down a name and address, and then folded it and handed it to Kieran.

"Thank you for your generosity, mate! This is his name and the address where I’ve set him up temporarily. It’s really safe and secluded. That guy is a real bad luck magnet. He definitely messed with the wrong people. Though thanks to him, I’ve made some money too!" Larry said with an even more delighted expression.

Kieran did not reply. He just looked at the information on the paper and walked himself out with a final wave at Larry.

After going through a narrow pa.s.sage only wide enough for one person, he reached the front of the laundromat. He never bothered to make eye contact with the black owner. He was only an owner in name after all. He was actually Larry’s bodyguard.

However, as Kieran turned on Falcon Street, a black car drove past him like lightning and entered the alley.

With a sharp screeching of its brakes, the car stopped right in front of the laundromat, and two black gun barrels popped out through its back windows.