"Meg, the only way I can be safe now is if you forgive me..." Chuck says kneeling in front of Meg's plaque on a dead tree. Dark fog surrounding the area. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, please forgive me!" he gets on his hands and knees begging the tree.
"Wait they're alive!?" Annabeth stares at me shocked.
"Yep, they're alive. Both Will and Bianca." I nod looking at her.
"Bu-but... ho-ho.." she stammers.
"Inside safe zones, a players hp doesn't deplete on its own. But the durability of an object does. Just like that beautiful, delicious sandwich... you gave me." I got a little lost but finish the sentence.
"Huh?" Annabeth still completely lost.
"That day the sword was sticking out of Will's armor, it wasn't draining his hp. It was draining the durability of his armor." I say.
"But then his body didn't disintegrate it was-
"Yep, just his armor, nothing else. And at the precise second his armors durability expired... Poof, will used a warp crystal to teleport away. Does look a lot like what happens when a player dies in game, but he didn't die." I say.
"Then what happened to Bianca?" Annabeth asks.
"I bet the dagger was rigged to her back the whole time. She had it all planed out." I say.
"But we would have seen." Annabeth says.
"Only if she turned around though. Remember, she never turned her back to us, not even once. She kept an eye on her equipment's durability while she was talking. When it hit zero, all she had to do was act like she was hit by the dagger, thrown from outside the window." I say.
"Then who was the person in the black robe?" Annabeth asks.
"I'm pretty sure it wasn't Grimlock, but Will. He and Bianca were in it together, they figured out how they could use this method to fake their own deaths. Getting people to think they were murdered in a safe zone was a calculated twist." I say.
"Everything they did was designed to draw out the person behind Meg's murder and expose him. The only way to find out for sure was faking their deaths and creating a vengeful ghost story." Annabeth says.
"And Chuck was the person they had pegged for it, probably since the beginning." I look at her. "Hey, you still have Bianca on your friend list right?" I ask. She sits up and pulls down her menu and scrolls through it. A small map opens up with a red dot on it.
"It looks like she's in a field on Floor 19, it looks like she's on a small hill. Just out side of town." She says.
"I see... that's it then, I guess they can handle it on their own. Our job is pretty much done now, won't you say?" I ask her. She smiles and nods.
"When I got that message to put a warping crystal in your bag... I-I had no clue you would end up being killed!" Chuck cries. A loud noise scares him, and he turned around to look behind him, but nothing was there. He faces the tree again and two cloaked figures stand in front of him.
"What did you do to me? Tell me!" the cloaked figure says.
"The
Chuck screams "The day we voted to sell the ring I looked in my inventory and there was a crystal and a note with instructions. I swear I don't know who gave the instructions to me!" he cries. "The note said to bond the crystal to Megs room at the Inn she was staying in. So, whoever it was could get in. Then I had to put the crystal in the guilds shared storage. That's all I did, I swear! I didn't want her to die! I didn't want to be part of that! Please believe me!" he begs.
"We recorded everything you said chuck." The voice changed and Chuck looks up seeing the two cloaked figure to be Will and Bianca.
"So, you... were recording?" Chuck says, sitting on his knees in front of a dead tree. Fog covering the area. Will and Bianca are dressed in black robes, Bianca has a small crystal that recorded Chucks confession. "So that's how it is huh? You cared about what happened to Meg after all."
"Of course we did, But you didn't betray her because you hated her did you?" Will says.
"I didn't hate her, Honest. Sure I feel guilty getting my part of the money from it, but the rare weapon I bought helped me get into the Legion... So-
A quick noise and Chuck falls to the ground. "Paralysis?!" Chuck groans.
"One down!" Another dark figure says in a shrill voice. A red cursor over his head. Two more guys come out of the fog.
"That's a helluva catch!" A figure says walking up to Chuck. "A big shot from the Legion!" The other two figure gather behind the one talking about Chuck, both of them laughing quietly like hyenas.
"Laughing Coffin..." Chuck Groans.
