Forced Login

by R K Billiau

  “Haaaaaa!!! Time to die you pieces of….” Kai stopped shouting as he looked around noticing there were no zombies. “Oh FINALLY!” he said, pumping his fist in the air. He ran over to us, slower than he used to be. “Thank all that is good and holy you guys got me out. I was so pissed being in that damn trap!”

  Madison smiled and ran over to our Martial Artist friend. “KAI! I’m so glad to see you!” He hugged her back, then looked down to see he was in nothing but his System given underwear.

  “What happened to my clothes?!”

  Madison smiled and pointed my way, and then towards the others in the tribe that were also most of the way naked. “Your gear takes a durability hit every time you die.” The look that came over Kai’s face was deadly serious.

  “This is not right. Have you guys already taken care of Tim? Do you know where Cora is?”

  I nodded at Kai. “Tim is still out there, using zombies to level up and hunt. I sent Cora screaming into the trap. What happened to you guys when you left to go back to the cave?”

  “That snake Cora tripped me as we were fleeing the zombies, she stabbed me in the leg with her spear. I never liked her very much, but I didn’t know she would do something so… malicious.”

  “I found out the hard way also…” I related to him all the fun experiences we got to witness from Cora and everything that had happened since he was betrayed.

  “It’s a good thing we’ve gotten this many freed. Although that’s interesting about the reincarnation aspect. I was getting up there in deaths. If I had gotten to that point, I don’t know if I would have stayed either.”

  “I don’t know how viable a tribe we would be if we keep losing members,” Sarah said. “The smaller we get, the harder it’ll be to thrive.”

  “That’s why we need to put a stop to this now,” I replied. “Let’s go loot those corpses and see if we can get everyone attuned.” We went out to loot and my Core Manipulation milestone ability combined with Lucky Find netted us 12 cores, far more than enough to get everyone we had saved attuned. “Let’s leave these extra cores on the corpses for others that might show up here. I think we should move onto the next spawn Point.”

  “I know I’m ready to get some vengeance,” Kai said, clenching his fists. We asked for volunteers to stay behind and left with a group of ten of us ready to kick ass. We went around the giant spiders which gave me an idea to incorporate them into our plan. We left someone just on the edge of the spider zone who would stay visible and make all kinds of noise to attract the zombies.

  This spawn point proved a little harder to manage because of the large boulders and thickening forest. When I tried to pull them, the horde would get stuck and end up turning around after a while.

  We ended up using two pullers to get their attention. I worked in tandem with Steve, and soon enough the dam broke and the horde followed us. Our team took down four of them using our guerrilla tactics before we got to the spider zone. Steve and I tried to Stealth out and drop the aggro. Steve was successful, but I must not have hidden myself well enough in the trees and every single zombie shifted their attention my way.

  “Aww crap.” I realized I wouldn’t have enough time to try to Stealth again. I guess this was one way for me to face my fears.

  I sighed, took a brief moment to center myself, and ran into the giant spider webs. If I had to die again, I wanted to go out with a bang. I wanted to run through every single web I could find, but after the first one my terror of spiders took over, giving me the Panic debuff and I fell to the ground screaming and flailing my arms. The zombies came in after me as the spiders descended. The webs covered me and a debuff popped up; Webbed - speed reduced to 25%. Perfect. I had time to flip them off as the spiders were piercing my flesh and gave me another debuff, poison. My health bar was green and dropping, and I was retching in fear. Knowing you’ll spawn doesn’t make being eaten alive any more pleasant. I wasn’t sure if it was the gnashing teeth or poison that got me this time.

  The Adjudicator was lounging in a comfortable chair, its feet propped on an ottoman watching me through its giant stained-glass viewing port.

  “Ah Hudson. I have made a good choice in you as a vassal. Your entertainment value is quite high!”

  “I’m glad my agonizing deaths are pleasing to you,” I chided.

  “Oh, they are! I assume you will be leaving again?”

  “Yeah, you know, gotta keep those ratings up.”

  “Ratings?” it said, confused.

  I embraced the light and spawned right outside the spider zone. Having lost all my accrued XP for level 3, and then paying for the cost of my Prime power, I was once again level 2.

  “You know Hudson,” Madison said as I materialized in front of her, “I’m going to totally out level you if you keep killing yourself.” She elbowed me in the ribs.

  “Did we get a lot of XP for all that?” Battle was still raging in the spider zone. I had to suppress a shudder watching the disgusting spiders fighting the zombies. Their oversized limbs covered in stiff hair and piercing zombie flesh in a chorus of moist plunger sounds was enough to make me gag. They were outmatched considering the zombies were unaffected by their stabbing wounds and their poison.

  “Everyone keep throwing at the zombies!” I shouted. “The spiders won’t last long!” I picked up a rock and led by example, cracking a zombie in the head.

  Sucker Punch! Your attack catches the opponent off guard!

  Critical Hit! You have inflicted 41 points of damage!

  You have slain a zombie!

  You gain 10 XP, you gain a party bonus of 2 XP!

  Soon enough giant webs shot down all over the area as the mama spider entered the fray. The webs hardened and trapped the zombies within. The giant spider spit its acid out, melting faces off zombies, but not slowing their flailing down in the least. The zombies, trapped by the webs and dripping in their own skin, could not get closer. The giant spider thrummed on a web strand, calling another swarm of the smaller spiders to attack.

  The tribe continue to throw rocks into the zone, targeting spiders and zombies alike. We didn’t get any XP from killing the smaller spiders, and they were doing enough damage to the zombie horde that we got only a fraction of the XP when one of them went down. I leveled back to 3 again and felt like a Yo-Yo. The mama spider died as a zombie was finally able to break free of the webs and pummeled it into a gooey mess. The tribe made quick work of this last zombie and suddenly the spider forest was quiet and still. Besides me, nobody had died.

  Madison shook her head next to me. “It’s such a waste killing all this stuff and getting so little XP.”

  I sighed in agreement. “At least there’s loot!” I checked everything for cores, taking the rest of the stuff to be divided among everyone. All except for one item, which I kept for myself.

  Boss Core: Giant Spider

  Requires skill: Core Manipulation to activate

  Charm Slot - Primitive Darkness attunement

  Durability - Indestructible

  Soulbound

  I would enjoy getting to send a Giant Spider to its death some time.

  Chapter 30

  We hung out by the spawn point for a while, kinda like zombies ourselves. Minus the cannibalism. No one seemed to mind the break, and I figured it was better than trying to get back in to take over Tim’s camp. We would end up on the wrong side of a slaughter with the sheer number of zombies, and the lack of any kind of environmental defenses we could use. So we waited. It wasn’t long until another tribe member spawned. Shortly after him, Chief Arnold came out.

  I grabbed his hand to pull him to his feet and helped dust him off. I tried really really hard not to say it. We stood face to face, my hand on his shoulder, a stupidly wide grin plastered to my face.

  “I told you so.” Damnit. Maybe next time. “Do you finally believe me about Cora?”

  He frowned at me. Maybe I was too hard on him. “Fine. Yes. I believe you. Thank you for getting me out of that.”
/>
  “Look, I’m sorry Arnold. Love is blind, right?” He didn’t respond, but he did move away from me, clearly giving me the hint to shut up. I didn’t take it.

  “You should know, I have a skill called Character Scan that allows me to see character sheets of players. Cora’s carryover wasn’t Accounting like she told me, or whatever waitress skill she told you. It was called Manipulation. She literally has an ability that helps her manipulate people. I don’t know how it works or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was using it on you.”

  His eyes narrowed and mouth fell open slightly. “That might explain why I kept getting increases in my Emotion attribute when we first got together. I thought it was just because I was getting feelings for her and it was some weird game thing.” His voice was flat; still annoyed, still heartbroken.

  I looked at Emotion again, trying to understand what he was saying.

  Emotion - Your base feelings. The higher your Emotion attribute, the more protected you are from opposing spells or skills that attempt to affect you, and the better you are at resisting social skills.

  That would certainly explain it. She was using her skill on him. “I bet you’re right,” I said. “But just a heads up, I ended up killing her after you died.” I paused and half braced for him to hit me. Thankfully he didn’t. “She should come out of one of these two spawn points that we control soon.”

  “We control two spawn points? How did you do that?”

  I replayed how we had taken out the zombies, saving many of the tribe members. “There’s a bit of a problem though. Eight people left the tribe after they died enough times to choose to reincarnate. I mean, I can’t blame them for wanting out of the death trap, but Tim has really hurt us in terms of manpower. I don’t know if he even knows what he’s doing. Do you have a way to see how many tribe members we have?”

  His eyes went blank, the familiar look of someone reading an internal screen. “There are 21 left, wait… now just 20, I kicked Cora. It looks like most of us are attuned though, if we can get the rest done, I can make us our own spawn point!”

  “That’s why we’ve been waiting here, to get as many people as possible out of this trap. All of them, if we can. How many need to be attuned?”

  As we spoke another tribe member spawned. We dusted her off and got her a core from one of the dead zombies. Then someone else came through. I recognized him as one of the Gatherers that Tim had been using in his slave camp. The horde of zombies I brought in there must have killed a bunch of them.

  “It looks like we only need cores for eight more tribe members,” Arnold said. “That’s strange, only seven more now? Someone else must have gotten a core?”

  “Probably the people at the other spawn point. We left them with instructions to attune as many as possible,” I said.

  “Good, things seem to be progressing. Once everyone has a core, we should put our focus on how to take out Tim. If he can’t keep raising zombies from our corpses while we’re unattuned, he should be much easier to deal with.”

  “Don’t forget about Cora!” Madison said, popping into our conversation. “She doesn’t deserve to get off scot-free.”

  Arnold sighed and frowned. The poor guy. “Yes, the question is how do we even deal with people like this? We have no way to stop them from continuing to hurt the tribe.”

  “We do what society has always done. We can’t kill them, so we have to lock ‘em up.” Madison shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess we need to capture them first.”

  “Perhaps Cora is using Tim as a pawn like she was me in all of this,” Arnold said. He closed his eyes and sighed heavily. Man, love is the worst.

  “It’s possible, but we won’t know until we get a chance to talk to him. Regardless, that’s a conversation we should have later. I think for now, you,” I pointed to Arnold, “should gather everyone that is attuned except for maybe a couple people and take them back to the cave. Granted, we won’t be getting attacked by wildlife anymore which will help a lot, but we are so close to getting everyone out of the death trap that I hate being out in the open like this.”

  “I agree,” Arnold said. “It would do us good to set up a real camp. If we are free from the malice of the wildlife, our foragers can forage, our Hunters can hunt, and we can begin actual growth and development.”

  “Huddy, I’ll stay here with you if you don’t mind,” Madison said.

  I looked at her, deadpan. Of course I wouldn’t mind spending more time with her.

  “Let’s ask Kai also,” I said. “Then the rest of you go back to the other spawn point and pick up anybody who has spawned there and bring them back to the cave. Hopefully we won’t need to be out here too long, maybe only another few hours, but the fewer we have the better for avoiding detection.”

  After talking it over with Kai, and helping another person who spawned, Arnold gathered up the tribe and headed to the previous spawn point. We dropped someone from the party so we could add Arnold in case he needed to send a warning about anything. Pinging the mini-map would be the signal that something was up.

  The three of us, Kai, Madison, and myself, would stay hidden while we waited. Madison Boosted Kai, who increased his Strength, and we moved a few of the larger boulders together to create a semi-circle barrier with the open end facing towards the spawn point. This cut off wind and gave us a place to stay undetected. As long as you didn’t realize there was a new placement of rocks, anyway. While rearranging another person spawned, and we protected her while the Death debuff wore off.

  “You know, I was pissed when you brought those zombies into the camp,” the woman, Sheila, said. “It sucked being a slave, but it was at least better than dying over and over. I realized what you were doing, though, and I really appreciate you guys fixing all this.”

  When her debuff wore off, we sent her running towards the cave to meet up with the rest of the tribe. We sat there in the quiet, waiting. I had surreptitiously sat really close to Madison and felt her body tense as she drug her fingers in the dirt. “What are we going to do if Cora spawns here?”

  “Kill her,” Kai said with no hesitation. He puffed his cheeks up and let out a breath, closing his eyes. “No, sorry we shouldn’t do that. Forgive me, the control I had in my previous life is not as… honed in this new, younger body.”

  Madison smiled at him. “There’s nothing to forgive, that was my first inclination too. Knowing what she did to you and Hudson, and even the Chief. I don’t know how we should deal with her, but since we never really die, killing her seems like a good option to just get rid of some of that visceral desire to make her hurt as much as she’s hurt us.”

  “Yes, but I trained my whole life not to hurt people, but to help people learn how to avoid hurt. I find myself at odds when facing someone as dreadful as her, who has done me and my friends great harm, while I have the body and emotions of an 18-year-old.”

  “How old were you when you uploaded, anyway?” I asked. “I was only in my early twenties.”

  Madison nodded her head. “Same here. Well 25, I guess that’s kind of in the middle. I never knew I would be a cradle robber,” she said, then blushed.

  “I was 22, so you weren’t that much older. Besides, we’re all 18 now, anyway.” I playfully leaned against her shoulder. She leaned back, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  Kai arched an eyebrow watching us. “You two seem to be hitting it off quite well. I was 67.”

  “Whoa, you were old!” I blurted out. There’s that lack of filter again.

  “I was, I had sustained many injuries in my time training and teaching, so I was in considerable pain and unable to continue teaching and training in all but the lightest ways. It broke my heart. Now that I am here though, I am renewed and honestly have found joy again.” As he spoke, we got another spawn, and he nodded toward the person appearing in midair. “It will be much better once we get this whole mess fixed.”

  It had been a while and things were slowing down, so we decided we’d only w
ait a little longer and then head to the previous spawn point. We arrived to see Steve and Sarah together. Steve had fashioned some drumsticks out of a few green branches and was banging them rhythmically against a hollowed-out log making a pretty impressive sound.

  “Finally!” Sarah said as she spotted us. “He’s driving me crazy!”

  Steve stood up. “Sorry man! I get antsy when I’m bored!”

  Madison laughed. I loved when she laughed. “How’s it going here? Have you had many come through?”

  Sarah nodded and displayed her hands, six fingers extended. “We got six, well, seven if you include Cora.”

  “WHAT?!” the three of us asked in perfect unison as if we had been practicing. Kai’s fists were clenched. “Cora spawned here? Where is she? What did you do with her?”

  Sarah just shrugged while Steve air drummed. “Man, that chick was like, cool at one point, but like she got all pissy when she saw us, and like started beating someone else that had come through with a rock! She’s a psycho! When we like, went to help the poor guy she took off. I would have tried tracking her but didn’t want to leave Sarah alone with a poor injured dude you know?”

  “Ugh. Do you know which way she ran at least?” I said.

  “She headed towards the plains I think,” Sarah said.

  “Damn, I bet she’s running to get Tim, we need to head back.”

  Madison nodded in agreement. “It sounds like everyone might have spawned anyway, let’s go back and tell Arnold.”

  It was an uneventful walk. We ran across some more rabbit nests, but after taking out the first one we realized we had out-leveled them, so we let Kai fight alone to help regain some of his lost XP, with the occasional heal or Boost from Madison.

  We approached the cave to a much different scene than I had grown accustomed to. There were people outside, laughing and working on various crafting skills. A huge fire was roaring, with a bison flank on a spit being roasted. I couldn’t hide the smile on my face. Seeing the tribe happy and, well, functioning… it was a shame to come running in and ruin it all.