Chapter 10 - A valid crashout

“Come ON!” Axa yelled, frustrated, as Bennin189 stopped typing. “So close!”

He had been alternating between the virtual reality and his laptop all day, trying to find a way to view the two players' quest under his jurisdiction, but had been unsuccessful despite his years of experience in coding and moderation. 

“Why can’t you just keep trying?” Axa grumbled, but stood up. “You idiot… I need hints about your quest!”

But of course, he was never that lucky, and the player had logged off without giving Axa any useful information.

“That bad, huh?” Cherry, his sister, and a moderator for a different game asked as Axa left his room and trudged into the kitchen to grab a snack. 

“Yeah…” Axa sighed, picking out some sugar-snap peas from the fridge.

“You wanna talk about it? Maybe I could help.”

“I wish I could.”

There was an NDA in place regarding Alpine, and it was especially strict regarding moderators and game coders. If Axa told Cherry anything whatsoever, he could be facing a fine of up to $50,000, along with the possibility of a lawsuit and jail. All the people he could talk about the problem with were other moderators who helped moderator Alphine… of which there weren’t many. People had preferred to be players rather than moderators, leaving the number of hands absurdly small. 

There was no one Axa could ask for help. He was on his own.

Cherry waved her hand from her spot on the couch.

“Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Axa headed back to his room and got back on the laptop, deep diving into the folder where he kept previous records. With luck, he thought, one might have information related to the quest.

------Glitch 1439 Case Notes: Player XXXXX reported repeated glitching of armor that would vanish when they crossed the boundary between the Dildon Fiefdom and Jilf. Player XXXXX is level XX, race half-elf. Glitch determined to be caused by a corroded accessory that failed to be updated in the most recent repair sweep. Accessory removed, glitch solved, player compensated for the removed accessory. Case closed XX/XX/XX.--------

------Glitch 3290 Case Notes: Magician Tower kept spitting players out when they were a few steps into their quests, and NPCs kept failing to appear around the base of and inside the tower. Glitch determined to be caused by the unexpected behavior of Player XXXX, who triggered Quest XXXXXXXXX, a high-level quest that was not fully coded. Quest was deleted to remove the glitch, player was compensated for the removed quest. Case closed XX/XX/XX.

------Glitch 4203 Case Notes: Temple of Masor in Necart reported fluctuation of ‘god power’ given by the game. Investigated, unable to find the cause. The glitch did not repeat even after prolonged surveillance. Priests are advised to message moderators if it happens again. Case closed XX/XX/XX.

The list continued on for another twenty-five entries, and Axa slammed his head down onto the desk.

“There’s nothing!” He muttered. “Nothing at all!”

Nothing could be related to the co-quest, and there was no glitch he’d investigated that had led him to believe such a thing could happen. More importantly, despite all of the frantic searching he did, none of the glitches he’d handled had been related to the barkeep in Marksville. That character had to be handled with kid gloves, which worried the moderator, so he’d hoped desperately he might have had some notes on interacting with or investigating the barkeep, but no such luck. It would’ve been too easy, and Axa slammed his head down onto the desk with a frustrated cry.

“Damn it!”