Bugs and Loopholes: A LitRPG Adventure (Beta Tester Book 3)

by Rachel Ford

  They cleared three more chambers – a large, shared bedroom with a handful of monsters, a storeroom with human food, and a library full of spell books, some of which they could pick up. The last aperture in the tunnel opened into a wide clearing. At the center, a firepit roared with flames. Wolves slept near the fire, and zombies ambled around the room aimlessly, moaning as they went. A few skeletons clicked and clacked their way over the uneven terrain.

  Across from Jack and Jordan, past the fire, three figures stood near an altar: two men and a woman. The woman was tall and pale, and wore a dark cloak. Craluda, he figured. She’s a vampire.

  One of the men had a long, scruffy beard and broad shoulders. He wore a cape of some kind of animal fur, and greaves made of fur, and every now and then as he moved he hunched forward the way the wolves did. Vestervel. Must be a werewolf.

  The final guy’s identity was less subtle yet. He wore long wizarding robes, the kind of thing he’d expect to see on a Merlin rip-off – if Merlin had gone off the deep end, anyway. Vivid explosions of psychedelic colors dotted ebony black fabric. Argantulum.

  “Here’s our boss fight,” Jordan said.

  “Yeah. Let’s get rid of the low level baddies first, so we can concentrate on those guys without getting hacked to pieces while we’re distracted.”

  She nodded. “Okay. We can hit the wolves while they’re sleeping. With a surprise attack bonus, we should each be able to kill one of them first shot. The others will just be waking up after that. We won’t have the element of surprise anymore, but we’ll have a few seconds before they’re on their feet.”

  He nodded too. “Then we get the skeletons, before they get anywhere near us.”

  “Right.”

  “And zombies last. They’re slow and dumb, but still…I don’t want to get pounded into the dirt by a rotting meat sack while I’m trying to fight a necromancer.”

  She laughed at that. “Me either.”

  They picked their wolves, and took up positions near the mouth of the room, but behind cover. There were conveniently placed stone pillars here, wide enough to hide a player. Then Jack counted to three with hand signals, and they attacked.

  Everything went according to plan. It was a brilliant strategy. They killed the wolves like they said, and then the skeletons, and finally the zombies, like clockwork: one, two, three, done.

  Which was as far as their luck held.

  By now, the three bosses at the other end of the room had come forward, around the central fire pit. Vestervel descended on Jordan, and Craluda came for Jack. Argantulum stood back by the fire, chanting some kind of weird incantation.

  Jack wanted to fire on him before he could finish whatever he was doing. But he was otherwise engaged. Craluda had abilities the other vampires he’d encountered so far didn’t. She didn’t just turn into a bat swarm, like they had. She summoned bat swarms, and rat packs too. Jack found himself battling tiny, furry beasts at his head level, and at his feet – all gnawing away at him, taking hit points with every chomp.

  Every now and then, he’d get an alert.

  Curse of vampirism warded off by Blasey family signet ring.

  Which meant that her bats and rats could transmit the curse too. She didn’t even have to get in close for an attack. For a long minute, Jack swung his blade and conjured up fireballs to dispatch the swarms and packs. It seemed every time he’d destroy one of them, she’d loose another. His frustration mounted.

  It didn’t help that Craluda taunted him the whole time, laughing and threatening to turn him into one of her undead slaves. “Poor, weak little human. Give up. You know you can’t win. Accept the kiss of death, and be strong.”

  He could hear Vestervel similarly taunting Jordan. Unlike the icy, musical notes of the vampire’s voice, the werewolf’s threats came out in a deep, gravelly rumble. “I’ll pick my teeth with your bones, fool human,” and, “Others have come before. They’ve all died, begging for mercy. You will beg too,” and so on.

  And all the while, Argantulum went on chanting. His voice got louder and louder, until it echoed off the ceiling and up from the floors, past the walls and through the pillars.

  Then, he heard the rattle of bones, and the moaning of zombies, and the snarling of wolves. He risked a glance around. The dead wolves were rising, the dead bone men and zombies returning to their feet.

  Argantulum stopped chanting. Now, he switched to conjuring great, terrible fireballs. Shit, Jack thought. Of course. He’s a necromancer: he resurrected the dead.

  They put up a valiant fight. But between the bat swarms and rat packs, the throngs of paralyzing bone men and vicious werewolves, the slow-moving zombies and the swift fireballs, they didn’t stand a chance. Jordan went first, downed by one of Argantulum’s blasts of fire. Jack followed a moment later, done in most ignominiously by the putrid, stinking paw of a zombie, smacked hard and fast against the side of his head.

  They respawned just outside the final chamber. “Well that was an absolute disaster,” Jordan said.

  “Complete cluster fiddlesticks,” he agreed. Which wasn’t what he meant to say, of course.

  But she got the point, and nodded. “I think we need a new strategy.”

  He snorted. “No kidding.”

  “Killing the underlings doesn’t really matter, because he just rezes them.”

  “We’re going to have to start with him. Then, we get the low level guys. Then the last two bosses.”

  “Okay. Well, we’ll still have our sneak attack bonus. With two of us, plus the sneak attack, hopefully we can take him out pretty quickly.”

  “Right. Before the dratted zombies get to us.”

  They moved into position again, each taking their spots behind the same pillars as the last time. Jack conjured his most powerful fire spell, and Jordan brought up a bow and nocked an arrow that glowed with some kind of magical energy. “Ready?” she whispered.

  He nodded, and they fired. The fireball sped across the chamber almost as fast as the arrow, and the two struck in quick succession, each finding their marks. Argantulum staggered under the joint attack, and they kept pouring projectiles into him.

  Meanwhile, Craluda and Vestervel jumped to attention, and the various undead and cursed minions prowling the area turned of one volition for the pair. But they didn’t waver in their purpose. Jack kept dumping fireballs into the wizard until he expended all of his magicka. Then, he switched to arrows. Jordan ran through half a dozen glowing arrows herself, and switched to fireballs in turn. Argantulum let out a terrible shriek, and collapsed to the ground, dead.

  By now, though, bats and rats had already started leeching away Jack’s health, and the wolves were a few strides away. The skeletons followed closely, hissing and clacking angrily; and in the background, the zombies moaned and shrieked. From the corner of his eye, he could see Jordan wrestling with Vestervel. But he had his own problems to deal with.

  Jack fought hard and long. He had a good dozen opponents right on him, and the vampire matron sending vicious swarms his way. Now and then, a reminder would flash through his thoughts:

  Curse of vampirism warded off by Blasey family signet ring.

  He managed to cling to life until Craluda reached him. But the vampire carried a long, sleek blade, and while he warded off a pack of wolves, she carved him up.

  “Like a gosh darned Thanksgiving turkey,” he told Jordan, who spawned alongside him. She’d fallen a moment before, done in by the great werewolf and a herd of zombies.

  She snorted. “Okay. We might need another new strategy.”

  He nodded. “We’re going to have to take the three big bads out first, in quick succession. Argantulum, so he can’t resurrect anyone, and Craluda and Vestervel because they’re sons-of-biscuits to put down.”

  “It’ll never work. We don’t have the time: the underlings will be all over us before we’re finished with Argantulum. Just like last time.”

  He shook his head, though. “We need to keep moving. Hide behind
cover for the initial hit, then get moving. So they can’t get near us.”

  She nodded hesitantly. “Okay. It’s worth a shot.”

  It was his turn to snort, this time at her skepticism. “Mark my words, oh ye of little faith: it’ll work.”

  It didn’t. They felled Argantulum as before, and avoided some of the initial hits they’d taken last time. But Jack walked straight into a puddle of oil under a busted lantern, and Craluda lit him up with a fireball. He went out in a literal blaze of glory, and had to wait another minute for Jordan to die. She was badly outmatched, about two dozen to one in the end; but she was as tenacious as ever. He found himself sighing impatiently as she prolonged the inevitable with every spell and weapon at her disposal.

  But eventually, they spawned side by side in the hall outside the end arena. “So I still think it’s a good plan,” he said, doggedly. “I just need to avoid that darned fuel.”

  “You know,” she said, “I had an idea, when I was dying back there.”

  He quirked an eyebrow, but shrugged. “I guess inspiration strikes at the weirdest times. Better late than never.”

  “I actually ran out of arrows, so I grabbed the revolver. You know, with the silver bullets. I only got one shot off, but it blew one of the werewolves into literal pieces.”

  Jack blinked. He hadn’t been paying too much attention to her final moments. She’d only been delaying a death they both knew was coming, after all. “Wait, you wasted one of those bullets? We only have three.”

  She frowned at him. “It doesn’t matter. We respawned at the last checkpoint: here. We’ve got all our stuff back.”

  “Oh.” That was a good point. Still, the hoarder part of his mind didn’t like the idea. So he cautioned, “We should hold onto those. We’ve only got three, and you never know when we may need them.”

  “Like…in an unwinnable boss fight?”

  He started to nod, until he took her full meaning. “This isn’t unwinnable, Jordan.”

  “Not if we use our supplies, anyway.” She held up a hand as he started to protest. “Look, if it doesn’t work, we’ll load. Or, probably, we’re going to die, and respawn here anyway. Either way, we’ve got the bullets back. Right?”

  He couldn’t fault her reasoning, even if he refused to admit it. So he made a skeptical and noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

  “So I’m thinking, I use this on Vestervel. It’ll probably be an instant kill, especially if we take him by surprise. You focus on Craluda, or Argantulum: whichever you prefer. I’ll help as soon as I kill him.”

  He considered, then shrugged. “I suppose if we keep moving…”

  She nodded. “Yeah. We can use your strategy. Just, I want to see what this weapon does.”

  He acknowledged, a little grudgingly, that it wasn’t a bad plan. “What’s the worst that’s going to happen? They’ll kill us?”

  Then, they set out. This time, Jack vowed to avoid the lantern oil. There was, he saw, more than one patch. A gift, he figured, from the developers, to help with player strategy. He took up position behind his familiar pillar, and she went to hers. They signaled each other to start, and the first thirty seconds went smashingly well.

  Jordan severely underestimated Vestervel’s resilience. It took all three shots to take him down. But seeing that the first failed, she followed it up with a rapid-fire tap-tap of the remaining shots. The boss werewolf went down.

  Jack, meanwhile, had decided to try a slightly different strategy. He used a fireball like before on Argantulum, but he divided his attention between the wizard and his procession of undead minions. As soon as the bone men got near a puddle of oil, he diverted a low level fire spell to it.

  They went up in a screech of otherworldly anguish. Jordan, by now, had joined his attacks on Argantulum. She saw what he was doing with the torch fuel, and mimicked it. She took down a few werewolves the same way, and he cooked some zombies.

  Still, though they whittled the opposing force down by quite a bit, the back and forth between the bosses and their minions meant it took longer to kill Argantulum than before. Craluda used the time to descend on Jordan. Jack tried to intervene, but he still had to finish the wizard off. And before he’d finished that, a thought ran through his consciousness.

  A member of your party has been afflicted with the curse of vampirism. You will need to find a cure, or you will be despised by most human settlements. Your entire party will be barred entry to holy places.

  “That’s just flipping great,” he said aloud. But he needn’t have worried. A bone man struck him from behind a second later, and in the ensuing paralysis, wolves and rats gnawed his last bits of health away.

  He wasn’t sure if Jordan died a moment before or after him, or if they somehow managed to synchronize their ignominious demises. Either way, they both spun up at their last checkpoint a moment after he passed away.

  “Fluffernutter,” he said.

  She laughed. “Wow. That’s maybe the most creative one I’ve heard so far.”

  He snorted. “Come on. The stupid cucumber one was worse.”

  She considered, and then conceded, “Maybe. I don’t know, I’m partial to fluff myself.”

  He started to argue that painting oneself green was defiantly weirder imagery than a marshmallowy concoction when he reminded himself that the point was irrelevant, and highly subjective anyway. “I guess. But either way, that didn’t work out.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “I did like the gun thing, though. I mean, I hate to waste the bullets. But it did buy us a lot of time.”

  She nodded. “And the lantern fuel was brilliant.”

  He shrugged modestly. “Well, I mean, once I figured out I shouldn’t bathe in it, anyway.”

  She chuckled, and they fell into a thoughtful silence for a moment. “I say we try it again,” she said at length. “I think we maybe just got unlucky. Maybe if we keep moving…”

  He nodded. “Good idea. We got a lot further this time than ever before.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  After a dozen unsuccessful retries later, though, they had to admit that their strategy wasn’t panning out. They would start strong, and then fall in the endless onslaught of enemies. “We’re missing something,” he sighed. “You sure you don’t remember anything about this fight?”

  She shook her head, a little miserably. “Not a darned thing.”

  “There’s got to be some other environmental thing we can use, like the fuel.”

  “Unless the only way through is with more manpower. Remember, you’re supposed to have at least five companions now. Not just one.”

  He loosed a long breath. “Sugar.”

  They sat there, in the dark, musty hall for a long moment, leaned against one of the damp, earthen walls. Then, though, she stood upright, a little abruptly. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “What do you have for weapons?”

  “Uh…a sword, a bow, a dagger…a coconut cannon…”

  She waved all of that away. “Forget the weapons. What else do you have? Any spells, or potions – or things we can turn into potions? You know, food or herbs?”

  His expression brightened. “Ohh…like some kind of poison?”

  She nodded. “Exactly. Or a ring or armor that’ll boost your attacks. Anything to give us a little edge here.”

  Jack started trawling through his inventory, and she did the same with her own. They rattled off their items. They each had plenty. But none of it jumped out as being particularly helpful in the moment.

  She had a ring that would protect against melee damage, and he had an old cloak that would make him a little harder to detect. She had greaves that would increase her running speed by a few points, and he had gloves that provided no armor at all, but would increase the strength of his own melee attacks. She had a few bottles of poison that could be applied to arrows.

  It might help a little, but neither of them figured it would make much difference o
verall – certainly not enough to change the outcome of the day. So Jack started running through his foodstuffs. He got to human flesh, and Jordan let loose a hiss of disgust. “Jesus, Jack. That’s disgusting.”

  He shrugged, even though the game was paused, and they couldn’t see each other. “You’re the one who built the game, not me.”

  “The game doesn’t make you collect human flesh.”

  “No, but it lets me.” She started to say something, but at that moment, an idea struck him. “Wait a minute, Jordan: the game lets me collect it.”

  “You said that already, and doesn’t make it any less –”

  He shook his head reflexively, knowing after he’d done it that she couldn’t see anyway. “No, no, I’m not talking about that. I mean, if the game lets you do something, it’s usually because it may be useful later, right? There’s a purpose. Even if it’s gross.

  “Well, here we are, in a werewolf den, with human flesh. And you have bottles of poison.”

  She stayed silent for a good five seconds. “Are you saying…poison them using human flesh?”

  He nodded, and then remembered she couldn’t see, so said, “Yes.”

  “It’s disgusting,” she said. “But, not the worst idea you’ve had.”

  He cackled. “Brilliant, you mean. Absolutely brilliant. We can throw out poisoned chunks of meat –”

  “Human flesh, you mean.”

  “Meat. We’re all made of meat, Jordan.”

  “You’re an animal.”

  “Well, technically, we’re all –”

  “Just get to the point…”

  “Okay. We poison as much meat as we can, and throw it out to the wolves. They eat it, we get rid of the whole wolf pack, if we’re lucky.”

  “And they don’t see us.”