Glitch Boxset
Page 4
Gnashing my teeth, I looked at the user interface. The health bar was more than half reduced.
> 45/120 HP
And the health bar was progressively vanishing to boot at a rate of one or so point per second. Seemed like I would die in forty-five seconds unless I conceived a scheme to stanch the blood flow!
How to do that? I didn’t have any medkits or bandages on me. Was there anything to check the blood flow someplace in the garage? I turned my head ceaselessly but never saw anything similar to a first aid kit. That stood to reason. It was just a garage. There were only heaps of useless rusty metal.
The crazy turret kept roaring. One of round passed through a hole in the body of the rusty car and punched into another shoulder of mine. A pang of sharp pain lanced through my body. The bullet struck me so hard I was spun around and hurled through the air backward. I collapsed to the flood back-first, bumping my skull on the floor. When I raised myself to my elbows, I found myself in the open.
The sentry gun kept on rattling incessantly. Heavy rounds bounced off the floor. I turned over and tried to crawl away on my stomach, yet it was impossible to get away from such suppressive gunfire. A few more rounds burrowed into my body. I let out a loud shout and then my world went dark.
Still, in a second the darkness before my eyes dissipated. On looking around, I found myself in some container. The bulkhead in front of me was completely transparent.
> New tip is available!
The pain was nonexistent now. Having examined myself, I got aware of two things. First, I had only a pair of underpants on again. And second, all my wounds mysteriously disappeared. Lifting my hand, I looked at it. The crystal was still there, inserted into my flesh a few inches below my wrist.
I unfolded the Help menu and found the new tip.
> Tip #3
> After you die you revive inside one of the Resurrection Pods closest to the place where you have died. Having died, you lose all of you items that have been in your Inventory, namely weapons, armor, medkits, food, resources, etc.
> Still, you can retrieve it all. In order to do that you have to get back to where you have died and touch the deceased body of your previous avatar. After that, all your items automatically get to your new avatar.
> After death you also lose some part of your experience points.
> While inside a Resurrection Pod you are completely safe from any dangers. Nobody can open the Resurrection Pod or do any harm to you while you keep the door closed. However, a Resurrection Pod keeps you safe only if you have been revived in it. In other words, if you randomly run into one of the Resurrection Pods on your journey and then get inside it, you won’t be able to lock it from the inside.
I placed my palms against the transparent door in front of me and gave it a light push. It easily swung open. The Resurrection Pod was in one of the corners of the room. As for the ruined vehicle, it was still in the middle of the garage. The sentry gun mounted on its rood didn’t open fire yet. It seemed not to spot me yet. The off-road vehicle I’d been using as cover was on my left at the opposite wall. The body of my previous avatar lay eagle-spread beside the car. I tried to figure the distance to my previous body out and decided if I should make a run for it. Would I be able to make it there before the turret riddled me?
Finally, I made my mind up. Having taken a huge step, I exited the Resurrection Pod. I then drew in a long breath, spread my legs, slightly bent my knees, and burst into a run. Halfway across the room, I heard the turret roared to life. Heavy rounds buzzed past me, thrashed against the floor, and pinged through the bodies of rusty vehicles. One of them tore into my shoulder. I cussed through my tightly clenched teeth.
On leaping to my previous body splayed out on the floor, I dropped on my knees before it. It was strange and even slightly terrifying to look at my previous avatar. It had its face distorted in horrible pain. I recoiled involuntarily and averted my eyes away from the body.
As told in the tip #3, I didn’t need to strip the clothes off my previous body and put them on. All I needed to do was touch the body. Once I did that, all its items disappeared only to reappear the next second on my body. Now I was armed and had my clothes on while my previous body was dressed only in a pair of underpants.
A few messages popped up in the log one after another, notifying about having received several items. I was well aware of that so I didn’t bother to read all these messages.
The turret continued releasing a ceaseless fierce stream of lead. The din was deafening. Spent shell casings were littering the floor. Heavy rounds buzzed through the air like pissed-off bees. One of them missed my head by mere inches.
Only then did I remembered that I was a warlock! So I didn’t have to hide myself! And then I thought, “Turn on the Shield!”
The next moment translucent power dome appeared around me. Bullets instantly ceased racing around me. Now they slammed against the bluish power shield and disappeared as if being dissolving in it. There were circling ripples on the surface of the shield where bullets hit it.
I found it odd that I thought of using this psi-power only now. I figured I had been suffering from such intense pain during my first encounter with the turret it made me forget about everything, including the Shield psi-power.
I took my pistol from the holster and, holding the grip with both my hands, set about firing at the sentry gun. Bullets had no trouble flying through the power field from the inside of the shield. Yet my weak ‘Newbie’s punch’ inflicted little damage on the turret and moreover, due to the low Accuracy attribute of the pistol, half my bullets missed the target. It took two and a half mags to destroy the sentry gun. While I was shooting, the Shield disappeared a few times and I had to recreate it. The Mana bar reduced slowly but surely. Lucky for me, I had enough of this magic energy so I could hold out against the sentry gun pretty long.
Yeah, the Shield was the quite useful psi-power. I thought I should upgrade it maximally later on.
A bright burst of light flashed and the turret exploded sending its charred pieces flying in every direction. The sentry gun was done for. A short message popped up before my eyes.
> +45 exp!
And then another one did.
> The ‘New obstacle’ quest accomplished! You have received the award: +60 exp!
I holstered my pistol and then remembered something suddenly. As I’d been racing for the body of my previous avatar one bullet had caught me in my right shoulder. Yet I had no pain now. I looked at the health bar and a piece of info appeared at once.
> 105/120
My health wasn’t diminishing. I then examined my wounded shoulder. To my amazement, I found no blood whatsoever as well as any bullet wound. Guessed the wound might have been superficial so it had already healed over. It had vanished without a trace, not leaving even a slightest scar or welt.
I was curious about something else as well. Lifting my left arm, I looked at the crystal. The Main Menu appeared. I switched to the Inventory and shifted my gaze toward the ‘Shirt’ name. The item statistics popped up but I was interested in reading only the one line.
> State: 75/100
Alright. Items in this game, like in many other roleplaying games, could be wearing down. The sentry gun had damaged the ‘Shirt’ somewhat when it’d been firing at me. I wondered what would happen when the item had its state amounted to nada. Would I be still able to wear the ‘Shirt’? Some roleplaying video games allowed the player to wear completely worn-out articles with all its statistics having decreased to a minimum. But what about this game? Could the player still wear completely worn-out clothes? I wasn’t sure. But I felt absolutely sure that the ‘Shirt’ could be repaired somehow.
Before I could figure it out, I felt the prickling sensation in my stomach. In a moment, I also felt cold and began to tremble. Then a message popped up before my eyes.
> Warning! You are hungry!
> Hunger: 30/100 (*)
> (*) Note:
A new tip is available!
The message had barely vanished when another one appeared.
> Warning! You are getting cold!
> Freezing: 50/100 (*)
> (*) Note: A new tip is available!
After a moment a notification of receiving a quest appeared.
> You have just received a new quest!
> Name: “Survival”
> Goal:
> 1. Get warm. Reduce the Freezing to 0/100;
> 2. Have a meal. Reduce the Hunger to 0/100. (*)
> Reward: +30 exp.
> (*) Note: A new tip is available!
For starters, I raised my left hand once more and looked at the crystal. A new tab was available in the Help menu.
> Survival:
> Tip #1 (*)
> (Show the tip: Yes/No)
> Tip #2 (*)
> (Show the tip: Yes/No)
> Tip #3 (*)
> (Show the tip: Yes/No)
> (*) Note: Unread tip!
> (Return to the Main Menu: Yes/No)
I unfolded all the tips and engrossed myself in reading them.
> Survival:
> Tip #1
> You have the ability to regenerate your HP. Meaning, when you take superficial damage, your HP will be gradually restoring itself over the time. However, if you get gravely wounded, then you will be bleeding and losing your HP. Moreover, if you have your Hunger increased up to 50/100, your health will cease to automatically regenerate. If you have your Hunger increased up to 100/100, your health will begin gradually reducing.
> (Hide the tip: Yes/No)
> Tip #2
> To get warm just change into warm clothes or stay for a while by any source of warmth. If you have the Freezing increased up to 100/100, your health will begin gradually reducing.
> (Hide the tip: Yes/No)
> Tip #3
> You can cook food but you have to learn recipes for that. As of now, you know only one recipe, which is ‘Cooking mutant roach meat’. You are going to need to find a fire pit with a pot. Or you can set it up by yourself if you have already unlocked the necessary skill. Then you need to sit down at the fire pit, look at it, add ingredients into the pot, and wait the process out. The cooked food will appear in your bag if it had enough free space for the cooked food to be fitted in. If you don’t have room in your bag, then the cooked food will appear on the ground at your feet.
> (Hide the tip: Yes/No)
> (Return to the Main Menu: Yes/No)
I couldn’t unlock another skill, for I’d already spent all the skill points and didn’t level up to 2 yet. But after having wandered around the garage for a little while, I spied some reflection on a wall. I walked closer to it and saw a fire pit sitting between two totaled rusty vehicles. The firewood crackled gleefully, tongues of flames licked at the bottom of the pot, which already had water boiling in it.
Sure the developers must have foreseen that the player might not have enough spare points to learn the fire pit skill so they’d placed one here. Well, okay. Some player might’ve said that from the logical point of view, it is strange to make up a fire inside a garage. Maybe I would have shared their view if I had been playing just some ordinary video game. What with my having mysteriously gotten inside this video game, I wasn’t going to quibble over some minor game implausibilities. At the moment I had a bigger fish to fry.
I crouched down before the fire pit and instantly felt pleasant warmth envelop me from head to toe as if I had wrapped myself in a blanket. I just sat there for a few moments staring at the swaying flames. But nothing happened. Then I directed my gaze toward the pot with boiling water. Just about instantly a piece of info popped up in my HUD.
> Pick a recipe:
> Mutant roach meat
I looked intently at the second line and after a second spotted a small thing the size of a matchbox appear in water at the bottom of the pot. I had no idea as to how many pieces of roach meat I needed to cook so I added the rest of the pieces of meat I had. A loading indicator showed up in my HUD. In a minute or so the process was finished. A message turned up in the log.
> You have just received 10 pieces of cooked mutant roach meat!
I reached into the bag. There were indeed ten pieces of cooked meat. I took one of then out and examined it. A piece of info appeared.
> Name: ‘Cooked morsel of mutant roach meat’
> Reducing hunger: -10 points
I continued fumbling with the meat. It still felt rubbery and didn’t look delicious whatsoever, cooked or not. Still, I was well aware that the Hunger wasn’t going to be reducing of its own accord. Whether I wanted it or not but I had to gobble this down.
Very slowly I brought the piece of meat to my mouth. Sniffed at it. It smelled of nothing in particular. I took a tiny bite of the meat. Chewed it. It turned out to be not bad. Tasted of chicken meat a little. And then I realized that I should’ve expected it to taste of anything awful. The developers were surely no fools and were well aware that the player might not have liked it if they were forced to feed on something disgusting. It would have affected reviews in a bad way.
Then I realized that something didn’t add up. When bullets were tearing into my flesh, I’d felt excruciating pain. If the developer had made roach meat taste quite good so that not to upset easily sensitive players, why were they forcing players to feel such painful sensations when being wounded? It didn’t make any sense to me. Once again on remembering the pain I had been feeling when bullets had been burrowing into my body and the crystal had been being planted into my arm, I flinched involuntarily. Moreover, I also recollected the messages saying some player had been burned alive or another had been boiled in acid and I shook with great terror. Suffering such tortures had to be much worse than eating something unpleasant. People play video games in order to relax. But if players were forced to feel pain in a video game then many of them might give up playing such a video game at all. And this would surely diminish the developers’ income. The developers couldn’t help but know that. So what was the point in having players feel pain in this video game? I couldn’t find the answer to this question. At least for the time being.
After I bolted down three pieces of meat, the pricking sensation in my belly disappeared and a message popped up in my HUD.
> The ‘Survival’ quest accomplished! You have received the award: +30 exp!
Before I had a chance to get to my feet, a notification of receiving another quest appeared.
> You have just received a new quest!
> Name: “Gathering resources”
> Goal:
> Find the following ingredients:
> 1. Fiber: 90 slivers;
> 2. Metal: 10 pieces;
> 3. The parts of the heavy machine gun.
> Reward: +30 exp.
It made me wander around the garage for a short while. In one of the corners of the room was a shapeless thing that looked like a coil of rope somewhat. Truth be told, I would have never given it my attention had it not emitted a flash once. I noticed the glitter in my peripheral vision and it struck me as odd, for the thing wasn’t metal so its surface couldn’t reflect light. Curious now, I walked closer. The thing flashed every now and then.
It reminded me of something. Many video games from my time had all interactive items glittering so that too lazy players or players who weren’t accustomed to challenges, having found themselves in a new location, could easily notice a button they had to punch or an item they could pick up.
On walking over to the coil of rope, I leaned over and reached for it with my hand. Yet I wasn’t able to pick it up. Once the tips of my fingers touched the item, it instantly dissolved and a message popped up before my eyes.
> You have received an ingredient: +30 slivers of fiber!
I straightened up. Then reached in the bag. Still, I didn’t found any new items inside it. Where had a coil of rope, or more specif
ically, the slivers of fiber I’d just picked up gone to?
I decided to figure it out later on and continued with my searching for other resources. After some time, I found sixty more slivers of fiber. The parts of heavy machine gun lay scattered near the sentry gun I’d obliterated a few minutes earlier. I also noticed a small box with shreds of metal in it, sitting beside one of the rusty vehicles. The box glittered faintly. I touched it. The box vanished at once and a message turned up.
> You have received an ingredient: +10 pieces of metal!
Then another showed up.
> The ‘Gathering resources’ quest accomplished! You have received the award: +30 exp!
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the experience bar just about fill up. Once I got just a little more exp, I would level up to second.
Another notification of receiving a new quest emerged.