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

by Rachel Ford

  “They’ll eat it, right, if we throw it out there?”

  “I think so, yeah. I know I did that in testing – with venison. Not human flesh.”

  He grinned to himself. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t find her discomfort a little amusing. “Well, I don’t have enough venison, so…”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t sound so dratted smug.”

  “Dratted? Jordan.” He affected a shocked tone. “Were you trying to swear at me? We’re on the job. That’s very unprofessional.”

  “I’m going to leave you to quest with Richard if you don’t focus…”

  That chastened him a little, and he got back on track. “Okay, how much poison do you have? I have about a dozen slabs of human flesh. Nope, fifteen.”

  He was pretty sure he heard her shiver. But she said only, “I’ve got four vials of instant kill, two paralysis, and a few damage potions.”

  “Well, that’ll be better than nothing, I guess.”

  “What kind of food and herbs do you have?” she asked. “If we can put together any more instant kill potions, that’d be good. Better make the most of this crazy plan.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “What do you have, Jack?”

  He rattled off a list of food and ingredients, taking particular delight in emphasizing the creepy ones. “Demon skin…what’s that? A human eyeball? Oh, nope, my mistake: demon eyes.” Eventually, though, he got to the boring ones. “Flour, butter, garlic, salt,” and so on.

  She listened, and then ran through a smaller list. She’d prioritized herbs. “I need hemlock root or wisp sprigs. I’ve got everything I need for poisons other than that.”

  “Well, I don’t have either of them.”

  She hemmed and hawed for a minute, and then decided they’d have to make do with what they had. Jack was glad of that. He wanted to learn how to make potions, of course. But at the moment, he was far too eager to put his theory to the test to have time for anything else.

  So that’s exactly what they did. Jordan proffered the poisons, and Jack applied them. Then, they crept back into the room, and tossed the poisoned flesh out to the wolves. She refused to touch it, so Jack would throw a chunk and duck back behind his pillar. One or two of the wolves would squabble over it, and one would win; then he’d eat it, and keel over dead.

  No one seemed to notice that meat fell from the sky, or that their comrades were dropping like flies. No one thought better of eating one of those mystery pieces of meat, either. The wolves just prowled around the room, oblivious to it all, devouring the tainted food whenever it showed up.

  When it came time to throw out the slabs of paralysis-tainted meat, Jack threw them all at once. He heard them land with a wet, heavy slicking sound. Jordan cringed, and the wolves gathered round. He waited until he heard them start eating.

  Then they proceeded with the rest of their plan, a few wolves shorter than before. Vestervel went down with the silver bullets. They burned any enemies that got near the fuel slicks, and they managed to take Argantulum down. But even with fewer wolves, they didn’t make it out of the fight. Craluda got Jack this time, and Jordan fell to the bone men.

  After they spawned, they sat in the hall in glum silence. They didn’t speak because there was nothing to say, really. Neither had any new ideas. Both feared that this level might prove impossible without more companions. But they’d already expressed both sentiments, and rehashing them only increased their anxiety.

  So Jack glared daggers at the dark walls, and Jordan kept bringing her gauntleted hand to her mouth, like she wanted to chew her thumbnail – but couldn’t, because of the armor.

  “We could try again,” he said in a space.

  She shrugged unenthusiastically. “Sure, if you want.”

  He didn’t want. They remained where they were. “I wish we could have found more of those dratted silver bullets,” he said in a minute. “You could take down all the wolves with them. That’d sure help. Maybe then we could get to Craluda before they got to us.”

  She nodded absently. But then, she froze. “Hold on…I’ve got an idea.”

  He glanced up. “Really?”

  “You have garlic, right?”

  “Garlic? Sure.”

  She grinned at him. “You’re a genius, you know that?”

  “Uh…” Normally, he would have taken the compliment at face value, a little embarrassed maybe, but not willing to dispute it. He’d never go so far as to make the claim for himself, of course; but he wouldn’t have felt any compunction to contradict anyone who might, either. But considering he had no idea what she was talking about, he asked, “How’s that?”

  “The gun: that’s what we need. We already take Vestervel out with the silver bullets, right?”

  He nodded. “Right.”

  “We need to do the same thing with Craluda.”

  “We don’t have enough bullets. Anyway, will silver kill a vampire?”

  She shook her head. “Not with silver bullets. With cloves of garlic.”

  He blinked at her. In his mind’s eye, he saw them trying to get close enough to somehow force the vampire to ingest garlic. It seemed a caper of almost comically impossible demands. “How are we going to use the garlic?”

  She whipped out the gleaming silver pistol and grinned at him. “With this.”

  He wondered for half a moment if she was joking. Then, trying his level best to avoid coming off as condescending, he said, “But, uh, that’s a gun, Jordan.”

  “Of course.”

  “You can’t fire garlic from a gun.”

  She snorted. “You can’t fire coconuts from a cannon, either. But you’ve got a coconut cannon, don’t you?”

  “That’s different.”

  “I know it’s different. But it’s not that different, either.”

  “It really is.”

  She waved this away. “No, it’s not. It’s a videogame. You can shoot coconuts out of cannons, and raise the dead, and all the rest of it.”

  He scratched his head. “Okay, but that’s a revolver. You know what happens when you pull the trigger? The hammer falls. That’s it. You need propellant and all that to, you know, make the bullet move.” It wasn’t a technical description, but he hoped it conveyed that the process was a little more involved than pulling the trigger.

  She stared at him for a long second. “I do know how it works in real life, Jack. But this is a videogame. And I’ll bet you I can use any kind of ammo I want. Garlic included.”

  He groaned. “It’s not ammo. There’s no gunpowder, or –”

  She waved him away with another dismissive swipe of her hand. “There’s also no fire spells. But – repeat after me – it’s a videogame.”

  “Spells are magic,” he protested.

  “Which isn’t real…”

  “Of course it’s not real.”

  “Just like werewolf hunting guns. Or garlic shooters.”

  He shook his head at the absurdity. “It’s ridiculous.” He was about to add that her fellow developers would have had to be crazy to even come up with something like that, but thought better of it – since they were only discussing it as she had just cooked the crazy notion up herself.

  “I’m going to try it.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” he repeated.

  She laughed at him. “Okay, but hand over the garlic.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Never more so.”

  “This is absurd. It’s just a waste of garlic.”

  “Just do it already. If it doesn’t work, we can load.”

  “It won’t work.”

  She started to complain about his stalling, but he fished a bulb of garlic out. “Here. Go ahead and waste it.”

  She took it, and separated the bulb into cloves. Then she dumped the silver bullets out of her gun, into the palm of her hand. And one by one, she slipped a clove of garlic into the three chambers. She grinned at him as they slid into place.

  He snorted. Simila
r dimensions didn’t mean anything. When the hammer fell, the firing pin and chamber would turn into a bizarre garlic press, and nothing more. He told her so, and she shook her head at him. “Let’s try it.”

  She didn’t wait for him to follow, but he did anyway. Less, if he was honest, out of a sense of duty, and more to be there to witness the epic failure that he knew was about to ensue.

  She took up position behind her familiar pillar, and instead of going toward his own, he sheltered with her. “Oh no. I have to see this up close and personal.”

  She frowned at him, but then shrugged. “Fine. I’ll get to see the surprise on your face. Up close and personal.”

  He laughed, which put a few of the zombies on alert, and she shushed him. Then, slowly, cautiously, she peered out from behind the pillar.

  The zombies were ambling around aimlessly, still agitated but making no real progress in finding the source of their agitation. She leveled the gun in Craluda’s direction, and pulled the trigger.

  A puff of white powder and the roar of a firing bullet filled his senses. It left him quite stunned, and he missed the initial impact. He caught sight of the next two savory projectiles, though, as they hit the vampire matron. Her body reacted the same way Vestervel’s had to the silver: she shuddered with the first shot, went down with the second, and exploded with the third. Unlike the wolf, she turned to dust after death.

  Jordan turned a gleeful expression his way. “You were saying?”

  He blinked, then frowned, then protested, “That’s absurd. That’s impossible.”

  “And yet, she’s dead.”

  Which was true for Craluda – but not the room full of enemies all around them, who took full advantage of their distracted state to descend.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was at once one of their worst and best showings. It was one of the best because they’d finally cracked the code: they knew how to kill all three bosses. It was one of their worst, because they died in record timing.

  Still, both spawned excitedly. Jack would only concede that her thinking had been original. But he still maintained that it was a ridiculous weapon, and it would never work in real life. Jordan reminded him a little gleefully that this wasn’t real life. She didn’t quite say I was right and you weren’t, but the implication hung heavily in the air.

  Jack refused to acknowledge it, of course. “Come on, let’s get this stupid level over with.”

  They decided they would start with Vestervel. Jack prepped three cloves of garlic, and Jordan got ready to reload as soon as she’d fired her silver bullets. They each took up separate posts now.

  And feeling quite aggrieved by the absurdity of a game that would allow you to fire without any sort of propellant, Jack waited for her signal. It came a moment after he nodded his readiness.

  He focused on Argantulum, dumping fireballs into the wizard. He heard the tap-tap-tap of the silver bullets, and saw Vestervel go down. Then, an agonizingly long moment later, he heard the same tap-tap-tap of the garlic shots, and saw Craluda vanish in a puff of dust. All of which only aggrieved him further.

  But he didn’t have time for annoyance. Argantulum was proving as tough to kill as ever, and the other baddies were moving in. He stayed focused on the wizard, and Jordan worked on lighting the wolves and zombies up as they stepped in puddles of oil. It was a more efficient division of labor, with less back and forth.

  Still, by time the remaining wolves got too close for comfort, they still had Argantulum and about half of the bone men and zombies to deal with. They’d whittled the wolves down to just two.

  Jordan darted out from behind her pillar, peppering one of the wolves with arrows. It took a moment, but he went down, looking like a hideous pin cushion. Jack stayed focused on Argantulum as long as possible, switching at the last possible moment to his sword. He barely avoided the vicious swipe of werewolf claws from the second of the two beasts.

  He dodged and leaped aside a few more times, getting in small, ineffective swipes. Then, he darted forward just as the wolf reached for him again. The edge of his blade came down hard and fast on his opponent’s arm.

  That made the fight a lot easier: a one-armed wolf was a lot less stable on his feet, and only half as effective with his claws.

  Argantulum recovered himself enough to start raining fireballs down on the pair. Jack took a blast to the back, but he ignored the drain on his health. The wolf jumped in and sank his teeth into Jack’s shoulder, bringing his health meter down to just under half. The game alerted him:

  Curse of lycanism warded off by Blasey family signet ring.

  He gritted his teeth and raised his sword arm. A swift upward jab through the wolf’s throat finished it.

  The wizard started to chant, the same way he’d done earlier to raise the dead. He heard Jordan call out something. At the same time, he yelled, “We have to stop him, before he rezes everyone.”

  She was running and shooting, first arrows then fireballs of her own. Now and then, one of her strikes staggered the wizard, and interrupted his chanting. But he picked back up as soon as he recovered himself.

  Jack had a wall of bone men between himself and Argantulum, and a slow moving procession of zombies behind him. He glanced at the distance, and decided he could make it; so he ran straight toward the zombies, and then took a sharp right, putting a pillar and some rocks between him and the skeletons.

  He kept running. The bone men were too fast to allow him to slow down. But he brought up his fire spells and dumped every last bit of his magicka into Argantulum.

  The wizard toppled over, still alive but too weak to fight. Jack ran and pulled out his bow at the same time. His first shot went wide and far. The second struck the wizard in the arm, a second before one of Jordan’s fireballs washed over him. Jack’s third shot was better. It hit square in the torso.

  Argantulum keeled over.

  Mopping up the remaining undead was easy enough. They focused on the bone men first, and then took their time hacking through the zombies.

  Then, laughing and congratulating each other, they set about looting the dead and twice dead. They went over the low level baddies first, saving the three bosses for last. Jack recovered some of his arrows, and picked up more gold. He found a few more enchanted rings, too, though he didn’t know what they did, and a slab of zombie flesh that turned Jordan green.

  She found a pair of enchanted shoes that completely muffled the sounds of one’s footfalls.

  Then, they headed to the far end of the room, and the downed bosses. He figured that’s where the best treasures would be – both on Argantulum and his chief stooges, and in their work area. He saw a great altar with a blazing brazier in front of it, some boxes and cages, and a large, ornate chest. His eyes were fixed on the chest.

  But he didn’t get there. He rounded the last pillar and drew up short. There, directly ahead of him, lay a frightened little boy, strapped to the altar. At first glance, Jack couldn’t tell if he was still alive. But then the kid loosed a terrible wailing sound, and he cringed. Definitely alive.

  Jordan gasped beside him. “Oh my God. That must be the lost boy. We need to help him.”

  He murmured noncommittally as the kid went on screaming.

  Jordan ran over, and the boy screamed louder. Jack stayed where he was, as far from the sounds as he could manage without being obvious, and watched her progress. The boy had been shackled with wrist and leg irons, all of which appeared locked. Jordan tried each in turn, all the while talking soothingly to the child. She glanced up at Jack. “We need the key.”

  He, in turn, glanced around the little expanse. “Probably with the necro,” he said. His bizarrely clothed body lay a few yards over, slumped and unmoving.

  She nodded. “Check his pockets.”

  They hadn’t talked about dividing the spoils of war. So far, they’d split the low level guys pretty equally, and whatever luck threw their way, they kept. Of course, these three weren’t random NPC’s, so they wouldn’
t be carrying a moderate selection of random treasures. Plus, each represented a different type of curse. So Jack figured their treasures would be better, and unique. But he hadn’t wanted to seem greedy. He hadn’t wanted to rush in and grab everything for himself. Now that Jordan bade him to do so, though, he shrugged. “Right.”

  He didn’t go straight to the wizard. He stopped at Vestervel, the werewolf who – now – was little more than a puddle of fur and blood. Mercifully, the dead man had dropped his rucksack when the silver bullets had disintegrated him. And it was clear of blood and gore.

  “Just going to check these two first,” Jack said, which technically wasn’t a lie. That his motive had less to do with freeing the squealing boy and more to do with looting the bosses while she was distracted, he didn’t feel the need to share.

  Predictably, Vestervel didn’t have the key. But he did have a whole slew of goodies, that Jack slipped into his own inventory without comment. “No key,” is all he told Jordan.

  “It’s got to be with Argantulum,” she said. “Hurry, Jack. He’s terrified.”

  Jack nodded. “Right. Just going to check the vampire quick, just in case.” Her goods were less collected than the wolf’s had been, but he only had to sift through dust to get to them. That was alright. He scooped her belongings up too, without paying much attention to their stats, and moved toward the wizard. “Yeah, you were right: he’s got to have it.”

  Jordan didn’t respond. She was too busy trying to console the screaming boy.

  Jack grimaced at the kid, calculating the time it would take to hustle back up the stairs with him in tow, and wondering if he’d be screaming all the way. Maybe we can go free the mother, and bring her down to him.

  By now, he reached the dead necromancer, and turned him over. He was the only one of the three bosses still intact, and he looked so lifelike, Jack shivered. So far, they’d been killing undead monsters and werewolves. But Argantulum looked like a crazy old man, the kind who dressed eccentrically and talked to himself in public, or maybe thought he had conversations with the chipmunks at the local park. A little nuts, for sure, but definitely human. And I killed him.