Chapter Ninety-Two: The Lucky Star

Once outside the black market district, Lu Kuan hurried straight toward the prison without pausing for breath. Since there were no other leads, he might as well check the lava fortress prison first and see whether he could find Mungo.

The reason Lu Kuan took Mungo so seriously was that this fellow was far from an ordinary non-player character.

Mungo spent his days moving between Lava Fortress and Tidal Harbor, and among traveling merchants, his status was basically equivalent to that of a rare elite monster on an open-world map: scarce, and immensely valuable.

As a traveling merchant, Mungo often sold items of extraordinary worth. Needless to say, top-grade purple gear and pet eggs could theoretically appear, though the odds were vanishingly small. More often, he dealt in things with special and unusual effects.

Some of them were the very kind of supreme items Lu Kuan had long dreamed of. Since he had happened to hear news of Mungo, it was certainly worth taking the time to look into it.

The prison of Lava Fortress stood in the city center. Its entrance was near the rear gate of the lord’s mansion: a grim, heavy door leading down into the deep earth.

A dozen meters to the right of the gate stood a vortex portal flickering with a faint green glow. That was the entrance to the instance known as the Lava Fortress Prison, a completely separate place from the prison before him.

As the first instance in the city to drop purple-grade gear, Lava Fortress Prison was extremely popular. Even in the middle of the night, players were still coming and going through the portal from time to time.

Lu Kuan stowed both his longbow and his short sword in his pack and walked toward the prison gate.

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

The moment he drew near, the guards at the entrance immediately became alert and advanced on him with spears in hand.

“Don’t misunderstand, gentlemen,” Lu Kuan said with a smile, raising both hands at once. “I just want to ask about something.”

One of the guards, a burly man with a full beard, jabbed Lu Kuan’s shoulder with the point of his spear and barked, “Cut the nonsense. Do you know what time it is? And this the place you come to ask questions?”

Lu Kuan did not mind at all and kept smiling. “Please, don’t take this the wrong way. A friend of mine may have been locked up down there, and I’m worried about him...”

The fierce guard frowned, about to teach this foolhardy adventurer a lesson. Before he could act, however, his companion tugged at his sleeve and gestured subtly with his eyes.

The bearded man paused, then noticed that Lu Kuan had already taken out a small cloth pouch and was offering it with a cheerful grin.

The other guard took the pouch, weighed it in his hand, and showed a satisfied expression. Seeing this, the bearded one coughed and lowered his spear.

“Um... what’s your friend’s name, and when was he taken in?” the more quick-witted guard asked.

Lu Kuan’s mind raced. Mungo was skilled at disguise, so who knew what sort of appearance he had taken on this time?

After a moment’s thought, Lu Kuan replied, “I haven’t seen the fellow in a long time. He’s a halfling, talks a great deal, and should have been brought in either last night or early this morning.”

The bearded guard shook his head at once. “Tonight only a few troublemakers were brought in. Some drunken orcs. No halflings.”

“Though we changed shifts at midnight. He might have been captured earlier in the evening, I suppose,” the other guard added, as if remembering something.

Lu Kuan frowned slightly. It seemed he would have to confirm things inside the dungeon himself. So he said directly, “I see... Could you gentlemen make an exception and let me in for a visit? Otherwise I really won’t be at ease...”

“Well... it is rather late now...” Both men wore awkward expressions and hesitated. But when Lu Kuan produced another small pouch of silver coins, both of them broke into smiles at once. After a few simple instructions, they stepped aside and made a path for him.

Lu Kuan thanked them repeatedly and strode into the prison. Once he was out of the guards’ sight, the smile vanished from his face, returning to his usual calm expression as he quickly moved through the dark passages of the dungeon.

In his previous life, Lu Kuan had been here countless times, and he knew the layout like the back of his hand.

In the dim light of the torches, this damp and freezing underground world appeared before him once again, and within Lu Kuan’s heart there stirred a faint warmth.

He remembered that when his girlfriend in college first began playing Echoes of the Gods, he had brought her here to run Lava Fortress Prison.

The scenes in the instance were the same as those in the underground jail before him, and the little moments of warmth from those days rose in his mind, leaving Lu Kuan momentarily absent-minded.

But soon he recovered and continued his search in earnest.

Twenty minutes later.

“Cough, cough... damn it, this reeks...”

Lu Kuan was nearly gagging on the thick stench of mold and rot in the dungeon, his features practically twisted together. “This smell... has it gone hundreds of years without being cleaned?”

What troubled him even more was not the smell. After searching every branch and corner of the dungeon, he had not found even a trace of a halfling.

There was absolutely no hidden chamber or secret passage in this dungeon. Lu Kuan was one hundred percent certain of that.

“Did the two prison guards lie? Or did Black Fox lie to me? Or was Mungo never arrested by city guards in the first place...”

Lu Kuan frowned slightly. Without lingering, he quickly left the prison.

With no clear lead for the moment, Lu Kuan pondered the details of the whole matter as he made his way to the bank, stored the cooking formula, and withdrew the alchemical materials he needed.

“What are you thinking about?”

Lu Kuan was deep in thought when a gentle voice came from beside him. Turning his head, he saw that Qingyi was standing there, watching him with a trace of curiosity.

“What a coincidence~” Lu Kuan said with a smile as he took the materials from the bank storage. “Nothing much. I just have a quest that’s gotten stuck.”

The corners of Qingyi’s mouth lifted slightly, and in a rare playful tone she said, “There are quests that can... can stump you?”

Lu Kuan chuckled, then looked at Qingyi and noticed at once that the girl’s beautiful face carried a hint of ease. Compared with usual, she seemed to be in a very good mood.

Since Qingyi was in the mood for conversation, Lu Kuan walked with her and casually explained the Mungo quest in simple terms.

At present, the only possible clue in the quest was the triangular emblem on those guards’ armor. But even for Lu Kuan, it was impossible to remember every small detail and clue from the game.

“A triangle?” To Lu Kuan’s surprise, after hearing this, Qingyi said, “I do remember a clue. Do you still remember the first deputy commander from that last quest in Lava... Lava Fortress?”

Lu Kuan froze for a moment, then quickly understood. “You mean Tang Jie?”

In the B-plus quest that Lu Kuan had completed together with Qingyi and the other two girls, the greatest villain in the story was actually this Tang Jie, though Lu Kuan had never met him before.