Respawn: Nightmare Mode (Respawn LitRPG series Book 4)

by Arthur Stone

  Note: This is your first global achievement! Bonus: you now have a second inventory with a weight limit of 850 grams. You can store both bound and unbound items in this inventory, in any quantity, within the weight limit. Items collected from monsters cannot be stored in this inventory. Items placed in your secondary inventory will be available to you immediately upon respawn. Congratulations!

  Cheater had never seen such a long message before. But, like the one from the first crossing, he would have to read it later. Now wasn’t the time to go digging through numbers.

  Still dragging Fatso, he coughed. “Clown, look, there’s a truck. Let’s drag him under it. It’ll cover us from the shrapnel.”

  “Truck” was generous. Fifty yards from the border sat the skeleton of an old pickup, badly rusted. Based on the soot gracing the nearby stones and the blackened wiring it wore in place of wheels, it had burned. It wouldn’t drive, of course, but it would at least give them some protection from the shrapnel whistling in from all sides and the bullets raining down from the sky.

  Wait. Where were the bullets? The helicopter still buzzed overhead, but he heard no volleys.

  Cheater squinted wearily at the chopper only to see that it was retreating.

  Had it grown tired of the pursuit? Was it out of ammo? Low on fuel? Or was this cluster dangerous for airborne vehicles. No one cared to answer. As long as it left them alone.

  Having at last dragged Fatso under the truck, Cheater flopped down beside him and stared up at the rusty underbelly. It was done. They could rest as they waited for the bots to come put an end to their journey. Then, he would respawn in a new region and...

  Cheater had no idea what would happen then. He should ask March.

  But not now.

  Now, he would rest. After a breather, he would ready his rifle and fire his final rounds at the approaching bots, trading his ammunition for bits of experience. He would get every last drop out of this trip that he could. Then, he would die and rise again.

  Normally, this time, not by priestly magic.

  “Why are you lying there?” March muttered, sitting next to him.

  “Just... catching a tan.”

  “Come on, we’re moving out. All of us.”

  “Let me die in peace,” Fatso pleaded. “Where am I supposed to go one these legs? You’re no longer the boss, March. Thank you. I mean it. It was an excellent crossing, beautifully done. No one will believe the stories.”

  “Alright, you don’t have to come to the dance,” March agreed. “But the rest of you, with me. Or you can go to hell. I’m still your boss, Cheater. Or have you forgotten our arrangement?”

  Cheater remembered March’s promises then, and how they were still unfulfilled. He had to get up and do whatever his indefatigable tormentor commanded.

  Clown was still staring at Button’s head, which was rapidly decomposing into black sand. He coughed, a trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth. “Now, I’ve seen it all.”

  “Congratulations, then,” March murmured, and shot somewhere without bothering to aim.

  “I’m staying here with fatso,” Clown said, just as peacefully. “We’ll dance together. I want to let this moment last a little longer. You go ahead. Cheater, I’ll keep your other rifle, if you don’t mind. You’ll have trouble carrying them both.”

  The newcomer nodded, rummaged around in his bag, and pulled out a few rounds of ammo. “Here you go. This is all that’s left. And here’s some pistol ammo.”

  “Thank you, Cheater. We’ll try to hold them back, but you shouldn’t expect much from us on that account.”

  “Thank you, Clown. Without you, we never would have gotten close.”

  “We all played our part. And we all played it beautifully. Good luck, young man. I hope that girl of yours proves worth it.”

  “Well, are you going to kiss goodbye?” March complained. “Come on, Cheater, get moving. We still have a lot of walking to do. And we don’t even have any beer left.”

  Chapter 26

  Life Nine. Thirst by the Numbers

  Cheater finally grew tired of turning the well’s lever. If there was ever water in the well, it had disappeared in the last reset. Geological changes happened, after all. Sometimes basements flooded, swamps formed, or lakes dried up. In this case, the land had run dry.

  Bad luck.

  He returned to where March and Tat sat and joined them, leaning back against the wall of a rundown old barn. “No water.”

  “That’s bad,” March replied, continuing his gruesome task.

  Tat was stripped to the waist and on her knees in front of him. There was not the slightest hint of eroticism, though. The girl’s body was covered in blood to such an extent that no scrap of clean skin was visible, and March was treating her wounds and drawing fragments of metal from them.

  All he had to pull them out with was his knife and his fingers. Neither were sterilized, nor even washed. But blood poisoning was no threat to players. Cheater had not been seeking water for sanitary reasons.

  Everyone was thirsty. Deathly thirsty. They would kill innocents for a drop of liquid. No drop was to be seen, nor anyone who could be killed for one.

  Another shard of metal clinked on stone. Cheater barely heard the sound over the noise of the cannonade in the distance. Small-caliber artillery rumbled off to the right, towards where Fatso and Clown still remained. He heard a dramatic metal tear. Plus the sounds of a rifle.

  His comrades under the rusted truck were not the cause. They were too weak in order to cause such a long and wasteful battle. Besides, their icons had gone black fifteen minutes after the group had split up. Before then, there had been isolated shots and grenades, but no serious combat.

  Had well-armed bot reinforcements arrived and run into some other adversary? It seemed likely. Infecteds? Atomites? Grays? Or something so rare that Cheater had no idea it even existed?

  It could be any of the above. They were very much in the borderland, a place defined by surprises.

  Terrible surprises.

  “Cheat, buddy, do you have any bandages left?” March asked.

  “One.”

  “Give it here—she needs it. That shard was very deep, and I overdid it with my knife.”

  Cheater held out the bandage. “Why did you bring Tat?”

  “Should I have left her?”

  “Well, she could have died in peace and resurrected in a normal cluster. Or gone straight away from here. But now, she’s hanging around the border. We’re walking along it, after all. Not even away from it. I don’t know why you have us going this way, but this is a pretty bad area, I must say.”

  “I thought she might come in handy,” March replied.

  “Why?” Tat groaned. “Does anyone here care about what I think? I died five times during that crossing, you know. The reward was great, but I don’t have infinite lives, you know. I’d rather not throw them away. If I can get to a quiet cluster, I’ll save one, at least. And if not... Well, at least I tried, and didn’t die happy like Fatso and Clown. By the way, why haven’t you kicked them out of the party? Now they’re hanging around, like this Kitty of yours. It’s annoying...”

  Cheater grimaced. He didn’t want to go into the party menu. His head was too muddled from the battle.

  So he suggested a compromise. “How about you turn off the party display?

  “That’s not hard to do. Does that work?”

  The girl sighed. “Ignore me. I’m not in the greatest mood. It was easy enough to get across, but I’m still shaking from the whole thing. I can’t even feel the pain now.”

  “I’m clearly a master surgeon,” March interjected.

  She changed the subject. “What’s this business you mentioned? We’ve done everything. I didn’t sign on to anything else.”

  “Well, the first objective is to find beer as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. What could be better than beer in this heat? We don�
��t even have any water left,” March said as he elegantly shook his canteen, pierced through by shrapnel. “So beer is our top priority. Then, we move casually in that direction.”

  “What is in that direction?”

  “Something that will help me fulfill my agreement with Cheater. I promised him something, and I must keep my word. By the way, I also hinted to you that sticking around might be to your benefit. Now, you’ve crossed two borders, and set a world record, besides. You haven’t sorted through all your rewards yet, of course. But surely you saw how big those numbers were. Just stay with me, and things will go well for you. Keep your prize bag ready. Some big gifts are going to be dropping in there soon. Now, let me pull one more shard out and we’ll be on our way. No need for us to stay around here. There’s only one barn in this whole desert; if they see it, they’re coming to check it out. Whoever wins that clash going on might remember our existence when all is said and done. The further we go, the better our chances of making it out alive.

  * * *

  As he followed March, Cheater indulged himself in players’ favorite pastime: figuring out the rewards he had received, considering how to distribute what could be distributed, and selecting from the various options presented to him. A lot of things had come in over the past 24 hours. The exercise also helped him escape from the pain, fatigue, and worry that beset him otherwise.

  Why worry? Everything had gone perfectly. Both borders were crossed, bonuses were received, and decent experience was gained by defeating the bots.

  The bonuses were spectacular. Bonus lives alone added up to 12 in total. Cheater hadn’t even died twelve times yet, so his current total Lives numbered more than when he had first arrived on the Continent.

  But March had said he could not fulfill his promise at this instant. He had to go somewhere. To some place he knew.

  With a party that, by the way, contained only three battered fighters with basically nothing in the way of weapons and ammo and with literally nothing in the way of water and food. Given the nature of the borderlands, they were in dire peril. Virtually any opponent would take them out without so much as a bead of sweat.

  They should be leaving, not seeking new adventures.

  With each step, Cheater became more and more aware of how much had changed in the last few hours. In the past day. Not of him as a person, but of him as a player. He hadn’t reached the heights of prowess like March had, perhaps, but the difference was phenomenal. Now he understood why people were willing to die over and over to cross borders at high difficulty levels. Months of pumping his stats wouldn’t earn him as much of a boost as those thirty-four minutes had. Plus bonuses that no one could obtain otherwise, not even by mowing down hundreds of undead.

  The secondary inventory alone was worth it. It couldn’t hold spores or other trophies, sure. But it had no cell limit. He could put nearly two pounds of ammunition in there. When he respawned, he would have it with him, without need to wander the city like mad seeking the System’s personal cache for him.

  He would have given anything for this back at the beginning of his game. Despite everything, he smirked as he remembered trying to stock up paper money and a note that held important information he was afraid he’d forget.

  But how could he have bought such a gift back then? All he had possessed were lives. He would have paid with those, if possible. Ten lives, at least.

  Even now, the System’s prize seemed very useful. But then...

  What were these new “perks”? They did not consume mana, they were not related to the track of ability development that the System had given him, and they did not depend on his character’s stats. They were perks, given as prizes for his achievements. Just as permanent as his appearance. Cheater had heard rumors of these, but he had never been quite sure whether to believe them. Here they were.

  Now, as long as he was no further than 75 meters from a high-level secret cache, he had a 25% cache of getting a notification and a HUD arrow pointing in its direction. For mid-level caches, that chance was 40%, and low-level caches ran up to 60%. Not even sensors like Tat had gifts like that. She had higher chances than 25%, to be sure, but she had to purposefully scan a specific area.

  So, that seemed useful.

  The second perk was less impressive. Immunity to Snake Venom sounded cool, but how many times had Cheater needed to deal with a snake bite? Not many. Of course, an immune’s body reacted in unpredictable ways. Although they could deal with any infection effortlessly, some substances were quite deadly. Botulism could kill you fast, for example, if you ate bad canned food. The poisons of many snakes and insects were in the same category.

  So at least it wasn’t a superfluous perk.

  The third was also inferior to the first. Yes, the Continent had traps and landmines, but not often enough to be much of a problem. It might save his life at some point, but if so, hardly more often than once every couple of years.

  Only one of the perks was obviously excellent. But what if Cheater picked up a hundred such perks? Two hundred? Three hundred? That would protect him from most of the Continent’s hazards.

  And that sounded great.

  How many borders would he have to cross at the highest difficulty, though, to get them?

  Far too many.

  Cheater had nearly 17,000 distributable base stat progress points, and 40,000 for his auxiliary stats. That sounded absurd. It could raise anything from level 0 to 57, or in the case of the auxiliaries, to 88. By spreading them out evenly, he could quickly boost his Character level.

  The first option seemed more attractive. He could level up his Willpower to the sky to make his abilities much more powerful, and then do the same with Luck, making Smile of Fortune even more potent. His overall character level would go up less than if he spread them out, of course. The point cost for each stat was exponentially more as its level rose. But perhaps the advantages were worth it.

  One of the System’s prizes was a list of five abilities.

  Sadly, he could not use them all. But he could select one to become his third ability.

  He would agonize over the choice, of course.

  The first skill offered allowed him to hold his breath for five minutes without the slightest discomfort. Very useful in situations where otherwise he would drown or be poisoned by smoke or gas. Also convenient if he was attacked from all sides with deep water around. He would only have to dive in, and he’d have 300 seconds to get away.

  The second ability was binocular mode for his vision, allowing him to examine objects at great distances, with excellent definition.

  The third made him immune to fire for thirty seconds. Crossing an open oil fire would not harm him. It even promised that his clothing and ammunition would not be damaged.

  The fourth was something out of Predator. The villain in that film had hunted humans by using his ability to blend completely into the environment.

  Finally, the fifth would allow him to make a mind-blowing leap. He could jump to the third floor of a building in one second, or over a truck that was rushing at him. His character would be protected from the potential damage to joints and muscles that such a trick could result in.

  As he studied the abilities in detail, he began to lean more and more towards the fourth option. Its description sounded wonderful. Perfect for someone who always found themselves hiding from dangerous opponents. Plus, its cooldown was not as bad as the others’, and its duration was the longest. He could adjust those numbers, too, by carefully distributing all his progress points.

  The other abilities were useful, but not as much as the fourth. It seemed built for Cheater’s style of play.

  He selected it.

  Note: New ability received! Note: You have activated your third ability. You receive +50 distributable base stat progress points as a reward. This ability cannot be lost when your level drops upon death. It will always be yours.

  Working ability name: Chameleon. This ability is activated when you clearly think or speak the
code phrase “Chameleon.” Whether you think or speak the phrase, you must do so firmly in order for the ability to be activated. You can always change the working name of your ability. This will also change the activation phrase.

  Note: Your command will not work if your skill is not included in your list of active abilities! You can view your active abilities in the Abilities tab.

  Skill Description: Your character melts into the environment. Your appearance becomes like the elements around you. In sand, you look like sand. In vegetation, you appear to have foliage and branches, and under you becomes like algae (but remember that, in this case, you will become obvious if you break the surface). Rain, snow, smoke, and other phenomena that can emphasize your outline, in whole or in part, can compromise your camouflage. Note: The ability is most effective when your character remains completely motionless. When you move, an observer can notice changes in the scenery and deduce your character’s location.