“Yeah. And one better watch out for night monsters swarmin’ the place as well,” I added.
“Right,” Crayne grinned crookedly. “So shall we trade? Like I said, I can give you some money as well. Guess fifteen thousand will do you very nicely.”
“How can one earn money, by the by? And where to spend them? I haven’t found any vendin’ machines yet.”
“You get money for quest competitions, event participation, that kind of stuff. As for vending machines, one of them is situated at the police station. Have it been marked on your map yet?”
I looked at the crystal to insult the map. Still, the police station was nowhere to be found.
“Nope.”
“Then what about the IMAX theater?”
I looked at the map once more and after a couple of seconds, found the said theater.
“Yep, it’s there.”
“There we go. Once there, make a left turn and head for Riverside until you reach the police station. There are street signs everywhere so you won’t get lost.”
“What exactly do vendin’ machines sell?”
“All kinds of stuff. Armor, weapons. However, more often than not one finds only inferior things there, the ‘white’ or ‘green’. ‘Blue’ items are rare for sale and one almost never finds a ‘purple’ thing for sale. Most players buy only ammo and first aid kits. By the way, if you haven’t known this yet, you got always money on you. I mean this is the only thing that you never lose after death. It really helps one out, y’know. So shall we trade now?”
It didn’t take me long to make my mind up. I already had the awesome biker armor set so I wasn’t particularly interested in keeping all those items in my bag.
“All right.”
Crayne handed me the pistol and looked at his Crystal. After a couple of moments, three bundles of bills leaped right from the player’s chest to dash through the air. They instantly disappeared once they touched me.
Three messages popped up one after another in the log.
> You’ve received money: 5000
> You’ve received money: 5000
> You’ve received money: 5000
“Truth be told, fifteen thousand don’t amount to much in this game,” Crayne grinned. “Ain’t all that large sum of money. However, it’ll be enough for a novice. At least for a few days, you won’t suffer from lack of ammo and first aid kits.”
I muttered something under my breath in reply and gave Crayne all “green” things I had in my bag. Not even bothering to examine the items’ stats, Crayne handed the items over to Bigman who then crammed them into his backpack, which already looked overstuffed.
I decided to ask Crayne about one more thing.
“How come are there so few players in the game now?”
“Because it’s the early hours of the morning,” Crayne shrugged his shoulders. “There’s always few players online in the mornings.”
“Can’t seem to grasp what this is tied to.”
“Really?” Crayne’s brow furrowed. “Well, tell me, how many nights have you gone through so far?”
“Only one.”
“Have you been able to hold out until the very morning? Or more likely, have you been killed at some point during the night? Most players, newbies at least, get killed at night because they don’t prepare for an invasion of night monsters properly.”
“The same goes with my night experience. I got ripped to pieces just after the night fell.”
“So tell me, what happened after you were killed?”
“Nothing special. I revived in a Resurrection Pod, as usual. But it was morning already.”
A hostile expression appeared on Crayne’s face and his teeth got bared in an unkind grin as he snarled, “Here we go again. You just can’t help but talk rot, huh?”
“I changed my mind,” Bigman spoke up for the second time. “He may be tellin’ the truth. He may actually have gotten trapped in the game. I don’t see any point in his makin’ this all up.”
“Nobody was asking for your opinion, meathead,” Crayne snapped at him. “Shut your trap if you don’t want to get electrocuted.”
Bigman shot him a sideways glance and said nothing more.
“Can you tell me what happens to a player dying at night?” I asked Crayne. But before he could give an answer to the question, I made an educated guess at it. “The player gets disconnected from the game, right? And they had to wait until after it’s the morning in here to reconnect to the game.”
“Exactly,” Crayne replied eyeing me angrily.
That weirded me out. I’d already learned that the game was still in Early Access, which meant it was presumably full of various bugs. Still, it wasn’t until now that I was starting to realize that I might’ve been some kind of a glitch myself. Not only wasn’t I able to quit the game manually, but also in terms of me, the game itself didn’t seem to comply with its own rules. That is to say, unlike all the other players, I couldn’t be disconnected from the game if died at some point at night.
“What reason was this done for?” I wanted to know.
“Where did you come from? Aldebaran 2?”
“No, I’m not from Aldebaran but from the pas––” I held my tongue. Crayne had already gotten his tits in a wringer and there was no point in pissing Crayne off any further. So I said instead, “I just don’t get it.”
“Firstly, such was the developers’ concept. A cruel game world, harsh conditionals for the survival. If you don’t bother to craft warm clothes or learn cooking skills, you’re dead. If you don’t prepare properly for the invasion of night mobs, you’re dead. Well, you get the idea. Second, do you aware that video game addiction was classified as a mental health disorder? Tons of teenagers hang out in virtual games around the clock, totally ignoring the real world, neglecting the online studying, and getting aggressive when barred from playing virtual games. Do you aware of it, don’t you? That’s a very grave social problem everyone’s talking about in the real world now. You can’t help but know about it. So everybody’s been trying to find a solution to the problem. The developers of this game contributed to it in their own way. If a player died at some point at night, they’re forced to leave the game for a few hours to deal with their chores in the real world, whether they like it or not. So yeah. That’s the reason. Think you got the idea.”
I wanted to ask something else, but Crayne beat me to it, “That’s it. I’m sick of your made-up stories and stupid questions already. There’re always numbers of assorted loot all over the city in the morning. Can’t spare you any more time. Other players will soon start connecting to the game. Have to beat them to as much loot as possible. See ya.”
Judging from his tone of voice, it was obvious that he wasn’t all that keen on seeing me or talking to me again anytime soon. His irritated voice clearly indicated that Crayne considered me to be a downright crazy, a nut to the full. He might even tell his friends the story of encountering a whacko claiming to be a time traveler who got trapped in the game.
The unpleasant hearsay might spread fast. If I were known as a complete psychopath, nobody would be intent on striking up a conversation with me. On the other hand, there might be an altogether different turn of events. If the developers or any other responsible people became aware of the player trapped in the game, they hopefully would do their best to figure it out and might even be able to actually get me out of the game.
Still, I didn’t allow such thoughts to build up false hopes. It would impossible to tell in what way events would unfold. Crayne had found it quite unpleasant, offensive even, to talk to me. So what if Crayne disliked me to such an extent that he didn’t even want to remember about our conversation, much less tell his friends about me? If that was the case, then the word wouldn’t spread and nobody would know about the player who got stuck in the game.
Crayne walked away with Bigman tagging along after him. Crayne glanced back over his shoulder every now and then
as if he wanted to make sure that I didn’t dog him. Turning away from them, I raised my left hand and looked at the crystal. I might as well go over to the police station to find the aforementioned vending machine and check it out.
After consulting the map, I set off.
Chapter three
Mobs would charge at me from time to time. I would take them out with my pistol. By the time I made it to the police station, I even leveled up to 3. I assigned the points into the skills I had last time. So I could build a fire pit again, cook mosquito meat, and utilize the Acceleration psi-power.
There was such a mess inside the police station, the walls covered in cracks and the ceiling given way. Large chunks of concrete and pieces of ruined furniture lay all over the room. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to pick my way through the debris, for the vending machine sat at the very entrance.
After walking over to it, I saw three buttons on the holographic display of the vending machine.
> Weapons
> Armor
> Other
I went through the first two tabs. As told by Crayne, there was little to no useful weapons or armor for sale. For the most part, just “white” stuff. Switching to the Other tab, I examined it to find cartridges for all kinds of weapons and various consumables, such as stimulators, i.e. items used for restoring health points, or vigors, items used for restoring mana points.
There were two types of stimulators. The first caused health points to regain over time and the second got it restored instantly. Sure enough, the price of the latter was much higher. Nevertheless, I was willing to buy one of those to test it out.
> Name: Stimulator
> Level: 1
> Restoring health: +50
> Price: 1000
> (Do you want to buy the item: Yes/No)
After I pressed the “Yes” button, a small cylindrical objected materialized right out of the air on a platform protruding from one side of the vending machine. Picking the stimulator up, I gave it a once-over. There was a diminutive needle sticking out of one end of the object. The second end had a small button on it. The word “Full” was along the body of the stimulator. It was a no-brainer to figure out how it worked. I bought two more stimulators and went on examining the Other tab.
All cartridges were divided into two categories, standard and special. The first ones were cheap. There was nothing special about them. In terms of the second type, they had statistics of their own. Depending on a type of the special cartridges, they boosted various qualities of the player’s weapon.
I had an abundance of standard cartridges due to my having gathered them up while on my wandering around the deserted streets. Yet I had none of the special cartridges. After examining items for sale a little longer, I decided to acquire a few magazines with armor-piercing bullets stored within them. Might as well test armor-piercing bullets out to get the feel of them and compare them with the standard ones.
> Name: Pistol bullets
> Type: Armor-piercing
> Level: 1
> Damage: +25
> Bullet velocity: -100
> Special quality: +50 damage on armored targets
I decided not to spend too much money for the time being for fear of encountering PKs. If I squandered all my money on consumables and ammo and then got iced once again, I not only would have no money at all but also lose everything I’d just acquired. It’d be a shame. So I’d better not to run through all of my money. At least for the time being. I had to teach myself to play without dying at the hands of PKs every ten minutes. Besides, if I got killed again, the money I had on me would really come in handy. Instead of delving into trash cans for ragged clothes and cartridges, I would head for a vending machine.
Having arrived at that decision, I left the vending machine alone and split the building. Looking around, I chose a random direction and started off. After some time, muffled sounds of gunfight reached my ears. Looked like the other players started to enter the game.
Weak monsters engaged me every now and then. It was fiends, spider scouts, and various overgrown mutant insects. The experience bar was gradually filling, although it did so not as fast as I’d like it to.
Soon a message popped in my HUD.
> Congrats! You have just leveled up to 4! You have got 5 unused skill points!
I wasn’t all that keen on lingering around in the street to become a sitting duck for a possible sniper while assigning the points to skills. So I walked into the nearest house and commenced examining the warlock’s skill tree. First off, I allocated two points to the Acceleration skill to upgrade it to the full.
> Name of the psi-power: Acceleration
> Description: Your movement speed, as well as your reloading speed, gets increased for a limited amount of time. Moreover, while the psi-power is active you take less damage.
> The stats of the Acceleration psi-power:
> Level: 3 out of 3
> Your movement speed gets increased by: 100 percent
> Your reloading speed gets increased by: 100 percent
> The receiving damage gets decreased by: 50 percent
> The duration is: 30 seconds
> Mana consumption: 125 points
I then unlocked another skill and immediately upgraded it.
> Name of the psi-power: Biokinesis
> Description: When the Biokinesis psi-power is active, your wounds quickly heal over restoring health points by accelerated consumption of mana points. While the Biokinesis is active, no psi-power could be employed.
> The stats of the Biokinesis psi-power:
> Level: 3 out of 3
> HP generates to the point of 100 percent
> The speed of HP regeneration is 5 points per second
> Mana consumption is 3 points per second
All five points were assigned. I then examined the first five levels of the Warlock’s skill tree. Each level had three psi-powers in it.
> Level 1: “Surge” –– “Shield” –– “Disarming”
> Level 2: “Blow” –– “Acceleration” –– “Flare”
> Level 3: “Telekinesis” –– “Biokinesis” –– “Vortex Trap”
> Level 4: “Harm” –– “Stasis” –– “Jammer”
> Level 5: “Darkness” –– “Teleportation” –– “Twins”
I had already learned and maximally upgraded the “Surge”, “Shield”, “Blow”, “Acceleration”, and “Biokinesis” psi-powers. After I reached level 5, I would probably unlock the “Vortex Trap” psi-power. Judging from its description, it was quite a useful skill. After upgrading it, I would probably unlock the Stasis psi-power. This skill was used to create a small area. Every player or mob within the area got frozen, completely immobilized for some time.
After that, I might unlock the Teleportation skill, that allowed the player to instantly transfer themselves from one point to another, covering quite long distances without wandering the physical space between the two of them. Yet before I could unlock the Teleportation, I’d have to learn and upgrade another skill on the previous, fourth, level in order to get skills on the fifth level available. That is, I’d have to choose between the Harm or Jammer. I didn’t know which one I’d decide on yet.
As for the Flare and Disarming, I wasn’t sure if they might be worth unlocking. In fact, these psi-powers seemed to be pretty lame to me.
The Flare psi-power is used to create a small glowing object tagging along with the player and illuminating their surroundings. In other words, it was a would-be flashlight. If one were to upgrade the Flare, one would be able to pitch the glowing object at another player to get them temporarily dazzled. So the Flare was a flashlight, which could be turned into something along the lines of a flash-bang grenade.
And the Disarming psi-power was obviously used to disarm another player. Once the warlock utilized the Disarming, dark energy yanked another player’s weapon away from their
hands and hurled it aside.
I doubted the usefulness of these two psi-powers. The skills situated on the higher levels of the skill tree, such as the Teleportation or Stasis, seemed more attractive to me.
Out of the blue, a harsh loud scream came from the street, bringing me back to the moment. It was mantis shrieking. Yet it wasn’t looking for me. I sneaked over to a window facing the street and gingerly looked out. The high-pitched yells still ripped through the air. The winged monster itself was nowhere to be seen though.
A powerful machine gun roared to life somewhere. Mantis screamed again, in pain this time. Loud resonant explosions banged at regular 10-second intervals. It might be either mantis hurling fireballs or some player discharging a grenade launcher at the mob.
The heavy rapid-firing machine gun cut loose with another long salvo. The mantis let out with another scream tinged with pain. After that, silence fell. The battle was over. No more gunfire. No more shrills. There was no telling who had lived through the fight. I decided to lie low for a while. No matter who was the winner, I’d better not to encounter either. The level 15 mantis was too strong for me to defeat it. But if it was the player who had won the battle, I best not encounter such a tough player either. So I stayed inside the building.
No sound came from the street for a couple of minutes. I carefully peeked out the window once in a while. Then an engine roared to life somewhere nearby. From the rambling of the engine rapidly fading away, the car obviously receded. After it was all quiet again, I finally walked out of the building.
Glitch Book Two Page 3