She was nowhere in sight at the moment. But she was somewhere nearby since the barking of her gunfire reached my ears from time to time. She was dealing with the swarm of weak mobs while I was to draw the giant’s attention to myself so as the monster didn’t bother the girl.
If I got killed now, she might think that I had done it on purpose.
Such had taken place once. I didn’t even try to get myself killed that time. The mobs circled me in. The girl was far away and didn’t notice that I was in trouble. So the mobs whacked me. Although it happened accidentally, the girl had thought that I got myself killed intentionally. She decided to punish me by activating the slave collar, causing me to feel extreme pain and reducing my character’s level by one.
So if I were to fake my own death, I would have to do so in the presence of the girl lest she get suspicious again.
The giant neared me. The mob was just a few yards away, looming in front of me. Its machine guns were trained on me, about to belch flames and lead.
Finally, the mutant cleared the distance that separated us, came to a stop, and let go with a tremendous roar that indicated it was about to attack. A moment later the monster lifted one hand above its head as its machine guns began burping.
The spent shell casings dropped to the ground. The heavy bullets zipped past me. Most of them went wide, but two or three bore through my body. I clenched my teeth in pain.
The medical drone put itself to strenuous effort to heal me. My HP started to recover and the painful sensations where the bullets had hit me began to lessen.
The mutant swung its fist at me; the impact staggered me, causing my character to drop onto the ground as if slammed by a sledgehammer. I checked my HUD and saw that my HP had been reduced by fifty percent.
The heavy bullets pinged off the floor all around me. Some of them tore into my body. The medical drone was doing its best to keep me alive, yet it was obvious that for all the drone’s efforts to save me, the monster would soon finish me off. I didn’t even bother to get to my feet.
The giant draw its fist back to finish me off.
Suddenly, the crack of a gunfire came from directly ahead. The mutant’s fist came to an abrupt stop in midair halfway over to me. Another gunshot split the air and the mutant lost interest in me. The monster started to wheel around rather awkwardly and slowly.
When the mutant was sideways, I saw my teammate attired in medium armor standing in the mouth of the corridor.
> Name: Christine
> Level: 19
My teammate had come to my aid. She really knew how to choose her moment. I had to continue fighting mobs now that Christine had appeared.
On the other hand, perhaps it was for the best. The girl might have thought that I had faked my own death again if I had died without her seeing it.
The giant burst into a run up the corridor.
“Get the feck up,” Christine shouted to me before disappearing out of sight.
She must have gotten too far away because the choking I suffered worsened and my HP was reducing faster.
I leaped to my feet and barreled up the corridor. A few moments later, I burst out of it and found myself in a chamber. The dead bodies of weak mobs littered the floor.
There was some loot scattered here and there in the room as well. Sure enough, the items were either common, which were highlighted in white, or uncommon, green. The rare and unique items dropped from more powerful monsters, such as the giant.
I looked around. The enormous mutant was chasing the girl, firing its machine guns ceaselessly.
“Snap out of it,” Christine yelled at me. “Aggro him!”
I obeyed her. Drew my peashooter and took aim. As my pistol dealt little damage, I had to hit the giant about fifteen times to aggro it. Finally, the huge monster whirled around and ran after me.
High-pitched screams suddenly filled the air, which meant that weak mobs started to spawn all over again. The breaks between each wave lasted for very short periods of time in the fifth––final––round of the Arena.
Something glimpsed at the periphery of my vision. I looked in that direction and saw a gleam of barely perceptible light next to one wall. Had to be a hidden fire trap. I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not acquired an eagle eye by this point.
There we go! It was my chance to get myself killed without arousing Christine’s suspiciousness and I was willing to take it.
After checking my HUD, I got aware that I had about fifty percent of my HP left. And it was no longer being replenished, for the medical drone was now hovering above Christine’s head, healing her.
It was a good thing too. A level 5 fire trap dealt lots of damage to a player wearing fabric or light armor. Perhaps I would die almost instantly.
Spinning around, I dashed across the room toward the fire trap.
“What are you doing?” Christine shouted to me. “Get over here!”
I pretended not to hear her but saw her gesture toward a corridor at the other end of the chamber.
Sorry sweetheart, but I got other plans, I thought.
I had a few more yards to cover to get to the fire trap. The giant was on my heels, its machine guns unleashing two streams constantly. Some of the bullets bored into my back, reducing my HP.
Christine yelled to me again, but I didn’t make out what she was saying, for her voice had lost under the roar of the two machine guns and shrill screams of the weak mobs.
The fire trap was just a few steps distant. I run as fast as the Agility attribute allowed me to. As I reached within the range of the trap, it exploded. The shock wave slammed into me, hurling my character to the ground.
I felt an excruciating pain lance through my body. I propped myself on my elbows. The giant was almost on me. An icon popped up in my HUD, indicating that a fiery debuff was placed on my character. My clothes burst into flames. But before I could suffer the torture of being burned alive, the huge monster finally finished me off, having delivered a coup de grace.
Everything went dark for a moment. Then the Spectator mode kicked in. All I could do now was watch my so-called teammate play.
Christine was an exceptionally good player. She dealt with the giant in nothing flat. A rare item dropped from the huge monster. Sure enough, the girl barely looked at it. She had to hold out against the swarm of monsters first. Which was extremely hard to accomplish. The girl was doing her best, but she soon got slain by the monsters.
As soon as we revived in the elevator, she turned on me. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
It was a no-brainer to understand what the girl was getting at, but I affected ignorance. “What are you talking about?”
“About your getting into the fire trap to get yourself killed,” Christine snapped. “Didn’t I warn you not to do this anymore? And why did you ignore me when I called out to you?”
“I didn’t hear you,” I replied deadpan.
“Quit putting me on!”
“I’m not,” I said looking the girl in the eye. “Think about it. With the giant on my heels, firing his guns and all those screams, do you really think I could hear you above all that noise?”
Christine was glaring at me for a few long moments. The girl didn’t seem to believe me. She had grown suspicious and pissed over the past few hours. She blamed me for our failing to beat the Arena although she had only herself to blame.
Christine looked like she was about to activate the slave collar wrapped around my neck. But she didn’t. Either she believed me or she came to the conclusion that with our dying over and over again in the final round of the Arena, it wasn’t a very bright idea to kill me and reduce my character’s level.
The girl said nothing. She spun around and punched a button. The doors slid shut and the elevator began its descent.
My teammate lifted her left hand and looked at the crystal embedded into her flesh just below the wrist. Sure, being concealed under the armored glove the girl wo
re, the crystal itself wasn’t visible, but it emitted the bluish glow that sipped through the armor.
I had no idea what Christine was doing. The girl hadn’t leveled up lately. She had the same level she had before we entered the Arena. Perhaps she had some unused skill points that she decided to use now to unlock new psi-powers. Not that I really cared about what she was doing.
The silence hung in the air. Other than the hum of the elevator descending, all was quiet. Since I had nothing to do at the moment, I thought back over the past few hours.
Chapter two
It had begun with the Death Race. Some mysterious player aided me in surviving the race and taking second. The player turned out to be a girl named Christine whose car I had stolen earlier on. The girl was keen on taking revenge on me. She put a slave collar on me and then gave me the option of having my level reduced to zero or assisting her in accomplishing some task. Sure enough, I elected to lend her a hand. Wished I had known what I had signed up for! Not that I had much choice, though.
Later on, we drove through the second location in silence. Only when a two-story structure materialized directly ahead did Christine revealed what she was planning on doing.
She said that we were going to the Arena. The goal was to get through five rounds. Various mobs and traps would be spawning during each round. To make things more difficult for players, each level in the Arena generated randomly.
Each round lasted for a determined amount of time. If a player managed to make it through one, they was given the option of taking the prize for the current round or not taking the prize but starting the next round for a better prize.
The prize for surviving the first round was a common item, for the second a common item, for the third a rare one, for the fourth a unique one, and for the fifth a legendary one.
“So what do you want?” I posed a question to Christine.
“To get the legendary, of course,” She snapped. “Otherwise, there would be no point in doing the Arena.”
“Then give my stuff back to me,” I said. “My chitin armor and Ice Volcanos akimbo revolvers.”
“In your dreams!” She said angrily. “You ain’t gonna need them anyway.”
Christine went on to elaborate on my role in the upcoming Arena fight. The first two rounds were easy to get through. The third and the fourth ones were a little more difficult to deal with.
The fifth––final––round was the toughest one. Christine had never managed to survive it yet, no matter how hard she tried. Which was why she needed me to assist her in this matter.
I was to detect traps that would in abundance during the final round. Also, the traps in the final round were barely noticeable so it was extremely hard to spot them and deal with the swarm of mobs at the same time. I was to detect the traps and trigger them so Christine could fight the mobs without having to distract her attention from the mobs to locate the traps.
I was also to aggro big mutants when needed.
If a player died, then they would revive in a random Resurrection Pod in the current location and they wouldn’t be able to return to the Arena for thirty days.
I thought about it all for a spell and then asked, “So if we get whacked, we’ll revive in random pods?”
Christen shrugged her shoulders. “Yep.”
I had a gut feeling that there had to be much more to it than that. But Christine pretended she didn’t notice me suspiciously eyeing her.
“How many attempts do we get to beat the Arena?” I wanted to know.
“One.”
“Just one? Really?”
Christine turned angry for some reason. “Are you dumb? How many times do I have to give the answer to your question? Yes, one attempt is all we got. Do you get it now?”
She was lying. It was obvious. Yet I elected not to press the point.
“Okay. So what’s the plan?”
“Haven’t I already revealed it to you?” She said pretending to be amazed. “Haven’t’ you listened to me?”
“So I detect and trigger traps and aggro tough mobs while you deal with the weak ones. That’s all?”
“Yep,” She replied. “That’s the plan. It’ll work.”
I still couldn’t get over it. “Seriously? You’ve never been able to beat the Arena. With my teaming up with you, the mobs will be twice as strong. So do you really think we can beat the Arena on the first try?”
“Shut up,” She snapped. “It’ll be okay if you’re following my instructions to the letter.”
She was holding something back, that was for sure. Christine had never beaten the Arena on her own. The mobs were going to be twice as tough, what with my joining in. But the girl was going to equip me with neither good weapon nor armor. Besides, the slave collar prevented me from using my psi-powers. So even if I managed to successfully detect and deactivate all the traps, the mobs would get twice as strong and Christine would have to deal with them all on her own.
So what were the odds of our beating the Arena on the first try? Nothing. Zip. Nada. And Christine couldn’t help but be aware of that. The girl wasn’t stupid at all. She must have a backup she hadn’t bothered to fill me in on for some reason.
Christine pulled up to the structure. We climbed from the car and entered the building. Off to the left was an elevator and to the right was a computer.
The girl started for the computer. When I made to follow her, she said to me, “Go to the elevator and wait there.”
After making sure that I obeyed her, Christine walked up to the computer. From where I stood, I couldn’t make out what the girl was doing but I guessed she was signing up for the Arena.
I wondered why she forbade me to go with her to the computer. Between this and her not having let me in on her plans, her behavior very suspicious.
The elevator doors slid open. Christine crossed the room and entered it, waving to me, motioned for me to follow her. I got inside as well. The girl punched the button with words on it that read START ROUND ONE.
The doors slid shut and the elevator began descending. It took several long minutes to finally come to a stop. As soon as the doors slid wide with a protracted hiss, the girl burst out of the elevator, saying nothing to me. I hastened outside as well.
As things turned out, mobs didn’t immediately start spawning so we wandered around the level for some time. Christine showed me traps and explained how to trigger them. Since the first round was the easiest one, the traps were easily noticeable.
Christine dealt with the mobs with ease. I didn’t even have to do anything. Some of the mobs had dropped common items. Christine picked up one of them, which was a level 15 pistol. Its stats were ridiculously inferior to my Ice Volcanos that Christine had taken away from me.
“Don’t think I can kill any mob with this peashooter,” I said doubtfully.
“You don’t need to kill anyone,” Christine replied. “You only need a gun to aggro tough mobs, that’s all.”
We returned to the elevator. We were given the option of taking the reward for completing the first level or proceeding with playing. The reward was a common shotgun for Christine and a pistol of the same quality for me.
Sure enough, the girl turned down the offer of taking the reward and punched the button for the next round. The doors slid shut and the elevator started descending again.
The round 2 was somewhat more difficult to get through. I even was on the line a couple of time and would have gotten killed had it not been for the medical drone Christine created, that was constantly healing me. Overall, the second round was easy to get through as well.
Then we started the third round. It turned out to be more difficult to survive than the previous ones were. The first two rounds seemed to be a warm-up to prepare players for the later ones.
The main problem was that I always had to stick close to Christine. When I got too far away from the girl, I started suffocating. And at the same time, I couldn’t stay too close to th
e girl, for she was running around the level aggro’ing all the mobs I had no protection whatsoever against.
Moreover, I had to deal with the traps. While Christine hadn’t needed my help in the previous two rounds, now I had to detect the traps and trigger them as there were too many mobs and Christine couldn’t deal with them and the traps at the same time.
All I needed to do to set off a trap was reach within its range. And then I had to get away from the exploding trap as quickly as possible. If I failed to get to the safe distance in time, I took damage and a debuff of some kind was placed on my character.
There were different kinds of traps: fire, cold, acid, etc. For instance, when a fire debuff was placed on my character I felt as if I was burning alive. Sure, the medical drone was constantly healing me, somewhat relieving pain, but it was very painful anyway.
When I finally died, I was extremely elated by that.
The Spectator mode switched on, enabling me to watch Christine play. She was doing her best to stay alive, but in the end, the mobs had her cornered in.
I wondered what would happen when the girl got whacked. According to her, if we both were killed, we would revive in random Resurrection Pods somewhere in the location and could return to the Arena only in thirty days.
Yet I had a gut feeling that Christine had been lying to me.
So when the mobs slew the girl and we both revived in the elevator, I wasn’t surprised at all.
I noticed a button on the control panel, reading START ROUND THREE, as if we hadn’t even played the third round yet. Christine punched the bottom and the elevator started descending again.
The girl whirled around and glared at me. “You should try harder! It’s only round three and you’ve already gotten yourself killed!”
“You said that we would revive in the random pods if we died,” I said. “How come we’re still in here?”
Glitch Boxset Page 40