HC: Pacifist | Ch. 241 - Light Trap (Patreon)

The gates were busy as always, but that didn’t stop Maggie from skipping through them. She used to enjoy skipping when she was a little girl, but she hadn’t been able to do it after losing her leg in the Water Wars. Even though her prosthetic leg allowed her to run and walk, it didn’t let her skip. 

She had finally upgraded her prosthetic leg in the game a second time, and her movements felt smoother and more agile. As she skipped from the gate to the Union’s tent, she thought of when the 14th was stationed at the Sea of Tranquility. Skipping was faster than running in the moon’s gravity, and they had to practice military maneuvers using the motion all the time. As she giggled at the memory of the sergeant clumsily hopping in a space suit, there was a shadow, a flash, and she was dead.

JugularStrike has attacked you.

-431

You have died.

You have lost a level.

You lost 1 strength. You’ll need physiotherapy.

You will respawn in the nearest graveyard.

As she respawned in Hilsford’s graveyard, she tensed. She hadn’t seen the attack coming. It had to be a camouflaged rogue. For her to be done in one strike meant that the attacker was at a much higher level than she was. She opened the union forums and looked for any reports of attacks. She skimmed through the different posts and comments and found what she feared.

“Hey, guys! My friend and I just got ambushed near the union’s tent. What’s up with that? Was anyone else attacked?”

This was the only one such comment, but she remembered her orders. Biting her lip, she sent a message to the rest of the 14th. It looked like Captain Drake’s prophecies of doom were coming true.

*

Roth consulted Bergelmir’s notes and examined the trap in the piece of leather armor. To his side, the wheezing vacuuming machine worked on sealing the trap on the other greave. The manual didn’t say much about the final step in setting the light trap, so Roth would just have to wing it.

Roth slanted the laser so that it was pointing at one of the mirrors and then turned it on. The powerful, white light beam bounced off the mirror and began heating the leather. Sensing something was wrong, Roth turned off the device. He scratched his head. He had to get light to hit the mirrors at the correct angle, but that would involve placing the laser inside the trap to hit the mirror head-on.

“What am I missing? How can I get the laser to hit the light at the right angle?”

Bergelmir’s notes were pitiful at best; it only said he had to shoot a laser into the trap. It didn’t explain how to. What now? Knitting and working with leather, even though they had been new experiences for him, hadn’t been so intimidating. He had experience working with his hands, and many of the skills required were transferable between crafts.

If someone knew how to glue wood, it wasn’t hard to figure out how to do the same with leather. Driving a chisel through leather wasn’t too different from nailing wood either. This, however, was something beyond him. He didn’t know anything about lasers. Fortunately, he didn’t have to figure it out on his own.

“What’s up, everyone! How is it going? Do any of you know how lasers work? I need your input on something.”

Among the different soldiers, there had to be someone who could perform small repairs on weaponry. Since many guns utilized laser technology, Roth thought that picking their brains would be the quickest way to go about it. He waited for a few moments, and no reply came. “Strange. Usually, someone responds right away.” 

*

After reading Roth’s message, SergeantSarg sighed in relief. When he got the notification for a message, he was worried that he had heard about Loki’s attacks. But it turned out that he just wanted to ask something about lasers. 

“Okay, so it seems that Roth is still unaware of what's happening here. Let's keep it that way,” the sergeant suggested.

Everyone else around the table nodded in agreement. 

“How bad are the casualties so far?” asked Bennie.

“56,” H answered drily.

“Could be worse,” commented Emily.

“It hasn’t even been an hour since I was attacked. This many deaths in such a short span of time is alarming,” warned Maggie.

Charlie asked the question that everyone else was thinking. “Do we have conclusive proof that it really is Loki doing this?”

“Who else?” the sergeant asked. “I don’t think we need proof. It’s him. It has to be. He has figured out that the Union is connected to Roth. It was a matter of time.”

“Were the 56 killed all guildless?” Pete asked.

H checked his notes and promptly gave the information. “Perseus from the Gorgons was targeted, as well as Irenia from the Basilisks.”

“That means that he's not pulling his punches.”

“I wouldn't either,” affirmed the Sergeant. “After the interregional event, the enmity between Pegasus and the other guilds in the top 10 has escalated. Loki wants to be as vicious as possible to send them a message.”

“He's smart. Instead of attacking them directly and starting a war, he's targeting the Union. That way, he makes it clear who his foremost enemy is, gets a strike at the guilds, but avoids a direct war with them,” explained Charlie.

The more encounters the sergeant had with this wealthy jerk, the more he disliked him. Drake was off doing an important quest, and had asked him to take charge while he was gone. He had to do damage control before the situation got out of hand. “Maggie, when they ambushed you, how many people were there?”

“I only saw one assassin.” The cyborg veteran was visibly upset over the ambush. Little puffs of smoke came out of her prosthetic leg as if it were a volcano warning others it was about to erupt. “He ambushed me right outside the city gates when I was traveling between the city and the union’s tent. He one-shot me. If only this were in the real world, I would have given them a proper beating.”

The sergeant gulped. He had seen what someone who took a beating from Maggie looked like. He set aside the memories of black eyes and toothless mouths and focused on the matter.

“How's the morale of the Union members?”

Benny answered. “A few have commented on being ambushed, but they haven't caught on to this string of attacks yet. For now, the overall atmosphere is quite good, actually. Everyone’s excited about the crafting tournament coming up. But it's only a matter of time before Loki vindicates these assassinations.”

The sergeant weighed his options. It didn’t take him long to make a decision. “We need to wait for the captain to return. His quest might help the Union. In the meantime, I want you to let the Union know about what's going on.”

“But sir, don't you prefer to keep this under wraps?” asked H.

“No. We strike preemptively. Let's reveal the assassinations on our terms. Even if it's a hit to morale, it will be much better if they hear it from us instead of whatever lame propaganda Loki has prepared. Let them know that Pegasus is targeting all Union members because we banned them from joining the Union.

“Also, make sure you spread the news that even players affiliated with top-ranking guilds were targeted. Hopefully, this will generate sympathy from the guilds and provoke them to help us. Even if they don’t want to step in, they might demand reparation from Loki. The more pressure on Loki, the better for the Union. In the meantime, advise players not to come to the union’s tent and to stay within the city walls. Also, tell them to avoid traveling alone or into dark alleys, even within the city, to avoid ambushes.”

“Onto it, Sarg.” H was already operating on an invisible keyboard, preparing the message to the Union.

“By the way, Maggie, you were our weapons specialist back in the day. You call Roth. Don't let on that Loki is targeting us. Roth already has enough on this plate. Let's keep Loki’s attention on us. We'll protect the Union ourselves.”

*

Roth was gluing together his sixteenth pair of lizard hides when he finally heard back from someone from the 14th. Maggie was calling him. “Hello, Roth,” she greeted in her usual dry tone.

“Hey, Maggie. Thanks for calling back. Is everything OK?” he asked, concerned. It was the first time they had taken so long to answer his messages. 

“Everything’s fine,” she answered promptly. “I'm sorry. We were in the middle of a meeting with some of the craftsmen. We were just tweaking things for the upcoming tournament.”

So that’s what it was. He had worried for nothing. “Oh, OK. I was worried that something might have happened. I talked to Rhapsody and Leanne the other day. They seemed to be very excited about the tournament, too.”

Maggie grinned. “Oh, yes. Those two spend the day in the tent challenging each other and other tailors to battles. They’re kind of addicted to it.”

Roth chuckled. That was in line with what he knew about the girls. “And how is the Union going?” 

“It's going fine. We already have three thousand unionized workers, and more are joining daily.” 

Roth was glad to hear about the union and to see so many people still joining it. It was a good thing, too, that they had adjusted the rules so that people could enter by winning a crafting battle. The more members the union had, the harder it was to contribute unique insights to the library. Being able to craft battle their way in made the Union even more appealing to hard-core craftsmen. “So you said you wanted to know about lasers,” Maggie prompted. “Right, right. So here’s the thing. I’ve unlocked a unique profession.”

“Unique?” asked Maggie with a twisted mouth. 

“Yes.”

“You lucky duck,” she said, annoyed.

“It’s not like I do it on purpose, Maggie. You guys look at me as if I know what I’m doing. It was just luck.”

“Oh, you know what you're doing, alright. But go on. What does that have to do with lasers?” Maggie was quick-witted and immediately saw the connection between Roth's profession and his inquiry.

“I can make light traps. I carve channels into armor, set mirrors into certain points, and seal the whole thing in a vacuum. Then, I have to shoot a laser into the mirrors, making light bounce between them indefinitely.”

“Interesting. And…?”

“I ran into a problem. I must make a laser hit the mirrors straight so the beam bounces between them. But I can only hit the mirrors at an angle. When I do, the laser reflects off the mirror and starts burning the leather where I carved the trap.”

“Okay,” she said, frowning. “What kind of mirrors are they?.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are they flat? Are they curved?”

“Uhh… on one side, they are flat; on the other, they are curved.”

“How curved?”

“A little?” Roth said, unsure if this was what Maggie wanted to know.

“No. Are they concave? Or convex?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Maggie took a deep breath. Roth could tell she was trying to hold her frustration. “Do the mirrors bulge inward or outward?”

“Outward.”

“OK, shame. Our job would have been easier if they were concave.”

“Why is that?” Roth asked, confused.

“Because concave mirrors focus light. They would help you correct the angle. What’s the shape of the trap? How many mirrors does it have?”

“Three. It’s a triangle.”

“And you said that the whole thing is in a vacuum?”

“That’s correct.”

“Shame about that, too. Otherwise, we could stimulate the air particles between the mirrors to emit photons. But then, you would also lose energy from the trap over time without a source of energy. Never mind.” Roth couldn’t follow Maggie’s jibber-jabber,

“Well, this thing you’re making would require the mirrors to reflect 100% of the light. That’s impossible. There isn’t such a thing. Also, if the light were perfectly trapped, you wouldn’t see it. Light would have to leak out for you to see it, which would mean the light wasn’t perfectly trapped. All of this tells me that the developers have taken inspiration from laser technology but are not making this thing 100% realistic. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

Roth blinked a few times uncomprehendingly. “I guess. So, whatever works here wouldn’t necessarily work in the real world.”

“Precisely. Off the top of my head, I can think of three solutions.”

Ch. 240 - Contact!

INDEX

Ch. 242 - Locked Out?