NPC Code: Red Riding Hood

The banging of the ball hitting the panel was the only noise we could hear, not until I caught the sphere and squished it in my hands. It had been a complete hour since Ryoshi tried annoying everyone inside this room. I guessed he had successfully done his part as the guard and I crumbled our faces while staring at Ryoshi.

If only our expressions could kill, Ryoshi would lie on the ground.

"Will you cut that out, Ryoshi?! You're damn noisy, like a mouse!" I screamed, and shut my eyes once again.

My best friend retorted and created another ball in his hand. "I was testing the projectile speed and the physics of this game from that ball you just EXPLODED! How can I mark my arrows now, huh? How can I even continue when you have destroyed my toy? Tell me, Okami!"

"Will you shut up?"

Our brief exchange made the guard grunted on her desks. The elf exhaled an exhausting sigh and burrowed her head on top of her desk.

My idiotic best friend expanded his palm and created yet again another ball, this time even sturdier than before. Ryoshi continued throwing off the ball towards the wall, leaving both the guards and me crazed. The elf guard thought that was the end of Ryoshi's annoyance, but she had thought wrong. There were hundreds of hair-raising towards the sky as we heard the raucous sounds of Ryoshi's doings.

The blond elf girl tried stopping him at first. But it would require the long-eared creature to open the bar and confiscate the ball. I wouldn't let a chance slip by and nestle behind this bar. And that elf knew that, too. Instead, she just glared at our figures, hoping for this hunter to stop pounding the ancient wall.

It was a fortunate situation that the elf did not try that, since she would find the key missing inside her pockets. I stole it and planned to use the key soon. But I needed a distraction of some sort to make her attention away from our sights.

"How long are the players going to arrive?" Ryoshi whispered. He finally stopped hurling his toy. "That guild is taking them an hour before attacking Nirvana."

All that the two of us were doing was an act to stir some anger towards the guard. Although Ryoshi's ball had an unpleasant sound, we needed the elf to hate us and leave the cell. It was a matter of time before the players would arrive and take over Nirvana.

Ryoshi and I schemed to snatch that chance and sneak out from this prison.

I looked at my monitor and stared at the screen for a few seconds. There was a clock that gave out the approximate time for them to arrive. I did not know why, but the guild wanted to protect their assault against all players in Code. Those players were unaware that I bypassed their guild and could receive notifications from them even being a

"About now," I answered.

It was not a coincidence that this happened. The ground below and above us shook violently, disrupting our balance. Even the elf who was guarding us fell from the seat but caught herself during the descent. The elf girl fixed her hair and weapon and looked upward to the surface.

The elves and the guard had no means of communicating. But Ryoshi and I knew what was happening up there.

"Is this your doing?" the elf asked as she gyrated to our sides.

I raised my handcuffs and gave out a smirk. "Ah, yes. It is mine. You see, if I wiggle my hands like this, everything will collide."

"Once this is done, I will make the two of you as fertilisers for the Gaia tree."

The elf girl had no choice but to retreat upstairs and provide another force on the battlefield. Everyone knew that violent shock came not from the friendly fire, but from an enemy breaching the place.

The situation was a walking time bomb for the long-eared elves, but a glimmer of hope for the prisoners held in this place. The elf girl knew she needed to escape this place. However, if she did that, the prisoners would make a move.

The elves locked some players here and there before we had stepped foot inside their dungeon. Although the news told us that the elves were the first empire to strike back against the players, these long-eared creatures refused to kill the players all at once. They wanted to simmer the killing spree and send a sign to the actual players outside the game.

It was a bloody mess, but it was what they did to the players.

But I doubt they knew they were inside Code. All I knew about these elves was their greed for revenge for killing King Arthur. It did not made sense at first, but I had realised that the Mainland and Nirvana had close ties with each other. Those long-eared creatures waged war against the players, resulting in this death game. Those elves only acted out because of fear that the players had gone rogue in the world.

Now that a player Killed La Finta, and the elves blamed me for it, those long-eared bastards had nothing else to do but continue to wreak havoc against players. They planned to take down the adventurer guild, which was the organisation produced by the players.

The elves already killed most of the players in Nirvana and their adventurer guild. It was the sudden news that shocked the entire world. Ryoshi was even lucky enough to survive after the elves found him wandering near the forest. The elves could have killed him, but they refused and placed Ryoshi in this cell.

The humans that came from Code and elves were the first unit that included themselves in the war. However, the elves were not the only ones capable of producing soldiers and fighters. The players also needed to consider the forces against the dragonewts, dwarves, Animalia, and other species.

The dwarves had already made their move. Although the game developers described them as neutrals, those miniature humans produced arsenals for their fellow non-player characters and shipped them using sails and other carriages. If my guess proved me correct, those dwarven carts would arrive tomorrow.

If I remembered it correctly, Alice in Wonderland could pose a great threat to our fate. I just hoped that nothing could reanimate that dead puppet back to life, or else every player would be in danger.

There was nobody who could stop Alice's prowess, nobody but me.

"Tsk. Wait right here, and don't move a muscle." The elf clicked her tongue and went to the staircase. "If you do, I will kill you myself! Do not let my promotion get to waste, you hear me?!"

If the elf girl had more power, the threats would have been menacing. But Ryoshi and I brushed her words aside and stayed silent for now. We did not want to rush after seeing the girl climbing the series of steps.

Patience would bring anyone to success. Even Ryoshi knew that phrase somewhere in his life.

"Tell me if you want to escape. I'll just play here with my ball," Ryoshi said, and threw the ball once again at the wall. There were many cracks on the panel made from his toy.

'Ryoshi told me he was testing physics in this world. Then why was he destroying that part of our cell?!' That is what I wanted to ask, but I kept silent about the occurrence.

"Yeah, yeah, Ryoshi. Do whatever you want. And we will escape this place after that person arrives in front of us." I answered.

"Who exactly are you talking about?"

Ryoshi followed my gaze out front. He even stopped launching the sphere and stood by, only to see a twister forming on the ground.

The individual that I had expected had the same abilities as Ryoshi. That man was both a hunter and a ranger. A master using the bow and arrow, my system and guts told me.

"Robin Hood. Ironically, he sounds like those you could hear from fairy tales." I exclaimed. "Well, his name is Robin Fitzooth, but his in-game name is Robin Hood. Don't you dare say Okami in front of them, got it?"

Ryoshi tilted his head to the side and asked, "Is this Robin Hood you're talking about an NPC? And how am I supposed to call you now?"

"Nope. He's a good man who helped me get introduced to Mer. The previous batch I was with attacked Nirvana." I answered. "And call me Wolf. I told you a million times already! I go by the Wolf. Bigbadwolf sounds dumb, so Wolf in short, alright?"

After a few seconds, the twister revealed a humanoid figure floating on the staircase. The body of an elf tumbled to the ground and ended up being dead. If I remember Robin, he refused to kill NPCs. During our first interactions, he told me specifically that.

I did not know why he killed an innocent elf on the stairs.

"I thought you were a smurfer? Why on Earth did you let yourself get caught inside this mess?" The familiar voice echoed through the cell.