Knight of Corruption (LitRPG)

55 - Missing in Action

"Jeez. I wish I looked half as cool as that guy..." Ryan muttered to himself, "...No wonder he has a bunch of chicks with him. Better armour, bigger sword, what the hell am I doing? I look like I just walked out of an anime con."

He'd followed Ren's directions down to the letter and found himself mercifully free of the clutches of the suburban environment he found himself in. Ryan had lived in such a suburb for most of his young life before he got dragged to this world, so why was he so bad at navigating them? It perhaps didn't help that his eyes were running, thanks to the prolific number of pollen producing plants.

"Achoo!"

It was supposed to be an easy job! Ryan had run hundreds of them over the years to make his living. He was a missing person specialist. When he heard that the person in question had been sighted in a sparsely populated village on the border, he jumped for joy. It was a sure thing, a slam dunk, it was being offered to him on a silver platter. There was no way he was going to mess this one up.

Three days. Three days had passed since he walked under the archway that welcomed unsuspecting travellers inside. Three days of having his allergies flare up like an angry bear. An eyewitness could have released him from his torment, if there were any to find. But Ryan had learned the hard way that most of the homes within the town weren't occupied at all!

It was a story he'd heard a million times. A young woman up and leaves her family behind without a trace, and they want him to find her. Usually they have a good reason to get away, sometimes they'd wind up dead in a ditch by the side of the road thanks to some bandits, and sometimes those girls...

He didn't like to think about it.

In the borders of the Federation, cases like that were rare. Rebellious daughters from middle-class families were his bread and butter. They could afford to stay somewhere else away from prying eyes; with a friend, or renting somewhere cheap using their money. Mary Freeter was one of those rebellious daughters. Her father was actually rather influential, and having a daughter run away when she's needed for a strategic marriage wasn't good business.

The price for finding her was steep, and Ryan wanted to get his hands on it. But for some reason everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. He'd gotten lost, the few people in the town didn't want to speak with him or didn't know anything, and now some other mercenary was poking around the place. He mentally chastised himself – if he'd just kept his mouth shut and not said anything, he wouldn't have known about the bounty.

"Screw plants man, screw 'em!" he jeered, collapsing down onto a deck chair outside one of the shops. He liked to talk to himself – kept him sane during long jobs. "I should take a page out of that guy's book and get me a companion or two. I've got a good personality! And an awesome sword."

Ryan was plum out of ideas. During his odyssey in the winding streets, he explored every nook and cranny of the place he could find in the hopes that he'd merely stumble upon Mary by accident. That didn't happen. He'd already invested multiple days into the job, and without success it was getting harder and harder to justify staying. Effort didn't pay the bills, results did.

"I'm sorry Sir Freeter, I tried ever so hard to find your daughter – but she chose the biggest craphole town she could!" he sneered. He knew now why other people didn't like living in places like this.

"No luck finding the girl then?"

Ryan turned to face the intruder, it was the man who manned the boarding house where he was staying. He was very tall, with a gaunt face and a bushy mop of hair atop his head. Ryan shrugged, "No Mister Harding, no luck at all!"

"A mighty shame. How about a beer?"

"Uh, sure. I'm pretty thirsty."

He smiled and dipped into the building, returning a minute later with a tankard of light brown liquid. Ryan sipped the local concoction down and lamented his complete failure. The price was dangling over his head and clouding his judgement.