A striker should never fail a mission.
This was the most important regulation that was also part of the job description.
And if he fails, all regarding details are to report immediately.
Well, he of all people never thought he would have the need to break any rule of his job. He was just so capable. But now that he had failed, he understood why it was tempting to hide one's mistake. And since no one suspected him, he would keep the extent of his mistake buried.
At least until he got behind what really happened and led to his failure. He already wrote and submitted the report the day after Bennett Jiant told him about it.
Although filled with half-truths and crafty, careful lies it was perfect to lead the developer's and other staff by the nose.
Then he began investigating the happenings of that mission troughly. But since he seemingly was facing a dead end right now, he wasn't sure how to proceed further. The player who was with the bug was nowhere to find, the corpse close to the place the seemingly female mage and the demon must've been before the game was shut down, held no indication that it was hers, except the possible death. Who else could've sustained such a shattered body except someone falling from a large height?
But this led only to another question: Why was there even a corpse?
Normally, players disintegrated along with their possessions to be revived again. Only two scenarios could leave a corpse of a player.
The first was if the player destroyed the avatar. Then, a dead body would appear, signaling the death of the former avatar. A destroyed avatar couldn't be revived or reclaimed at a later time. But one could make an undead from the corpse.
Necromancers even fought to acquire high level dead avatars. But they were as rare as they were unique. At least high level ones. The lower level avatars were basically worthless and often used to lure monsters. Mostly they were burned at the crematorium if the players didn't want them to end up as monster food.
The other case was even more of a rarity and only had a handful of people who had such an occasion: An encounter with an NPC who could destroy souls. Since players had no souls, they first would lose their energy. If the NPC then still was hellbent on taking their souls, their account could be forcibly separated from their avatar, leading to a "soulless" corpse and a loss of items as well as any other progress the player made.
But such cases were such a rarity because there were only a few monsters who could even affect the soul to such a degree that a majority of those monsters shouldn't be available at all.
He didn't know enough about the original NPC to find out which abilities the demon had. But it was definitely insanely powerful for any player right now.
So was this the reason? But he still couldn't imagine who had destroyed the bug if the demon killed the player. Even then, the player was far too weak to kill a high level NPC. Her attack of acid balls had not even moved his health bar in the slightest. She wasn't even close to level 100 and maybe even lower than level 50 or 60. And now, he had no other clue to find the player since she (or he) could have made any other new account.
And even his attempt to find the remaining items failed because the geezers hindered him with their useless meeting! What a joke!
The only loss of a trail that made sense to him, at least vaguely, was that there was no demonic corpse. Since the bug in its entirety was erased due to the server-shutdown, it was the only 'normal' occurrence in his case.
Had the geezers shut the servers down by accident before he could finish his mission? Or was it planned all along just to separate the bug from the code by grasping it in its entirety?
Before, he wouldn't have cared at all. Only his own performance and pleasure mattered to him, after all. This was his only aim and teaching that kept him alive and afloat in this tank full of sharks trying to rip him into shreds and take his status from him.
But since this occurrence could affect his performance - and in fact cast a shadow of uncertainty over his future promotions, he cared deeply to find the cause of the mishap and clear his records. If he could prove that it was neither his fault or that the developers were involved or at least to blame for mishap, nothing would be hindering his advance to the top ten in a one or two years.
Since the top ten weren't getting younger, his chance of exceeding them grew with every day.
And while he had no other pressing matters, it could suffice as a momentary distraction from the sheer incompetence from people in power.
The 13th striker also had another goal: Since his operational or commercial accounts were strictly supervised by the developers as well as other technical staff, he always wanted to level up a private account for himself. An account that couldn't be tracked back to him.
And since it could suffice his purpose, he could use this account to investigate the death of the bug as well as find the cause of his failed mission.
Sooner or later he would find the culprit of his failure and hold them accountable.
He would make sure of it.