Glitch Boxset

by Victor Deckard

  Christine eyed me for a few moments and then a small vulpine smile touched her pink lips.

  “Everything goes according to my plan,” She said.

  Although she elected not to elaborate on that, it wasn’t all that hard for me to do the math.

  “You’ve caused some glitch,” I said, “when you meddled with that computer upstairs, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” She nodded not denying her wrongdoing.

  “So we’re gonna restart every time we get killed over and over again until we beat the Arena?” I wanted to know.

  “Yep, that’s the plan.”

  “Then I refuse to participate in that. You didn’t mention anything about that in the first place.”

  “And what are you gonna do?” Christine asked still smiling.

  From the expression on her face, I could tell that something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

  I decided to bluff my way out of it. “You put that freakin’ collar on me, but I can still quit the game to create a new character, right?”

  I even lifted my left hand and looked at the crystal, bringing up the Main Menu. Christine didn’t try to stop me. Instead, she continued to stand still, eyeing me and smiling.

  I gazed at the inactive Quit button for a couple of seconds, not knowing what else I could do.

  After several seconds passed, Christine asked, “So? Are gonna quit or what?”

  I had no idea what was happening. Christine seemed to be aware that I couldn’t quit the game. But how had she found out about it?

  Flynn had posted the thread about a player trapped in the game on the forum. Before the moderators deleted the thread, some people read it. Was Christine one of them? Seemed to be that way. I couldn’t give other explanation as to how she learned about it.

  I lowered my hand and silently looked at the girl.

  “So? Why didn’t you quit the game?” She asked sarcastically. “Did you change your mind or what?”

  “What does it mean?” I inquired noncommittally.

  Christine no longer smiled as she replied, “A little too late for quitting the game. You should’ve done it before we entered the Arena. The glitch I caused enables players to re-play the round during which they died. And that glitch also affects the players with slave collars on. Now you won’t be able to quit the game unless I do and you also can’t enter the game if I’m offline.”

  Well, at least she didn’t know about my having been trapped in the game.

  We continued to play and ultimately beat the third round in five or so tries.

  I had to find a way to get rid of the collar because I couldn’t take it anymore. Having a debuff placed on my character after triggering a trap and suffering the consequent extreme pain was almost too much to bear. Yet I didn’t have the slightest idea as to how to get rid of the slave collar at the moment.

  I even told Christine once that I could feel pain in this game for some reason. Sure enough, she didn’t buy it and concluded that I was just trying to trick her into taking the collar off me.

  After some time passed, another thought struck me. Maybe I should just let her reduce my character’s level to zero. But then something happened that completely turned me off to the idea.

  The swarm of weak mobs circled me in and killed me. Christine didn’t see this because she was far away at the moment. After she got whacked herself, we as usual revived in the elevator.

  The girl glared at me and said, “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?”

  Before I could reply, Christine activated the collar. The surge of electrical power lanced through my body. The girl deactivated the collar only when I died and my level got reduced by one.

  “Don’t you dare intentionally get yourself killed again, you hear?” She warned me angrily after I revived alongside her.

  After that, I decided not to let her reduce my level to zero. It was too much to bear. Sure, having a debuff placed on my character was painful as well, but when dealing with the traps, I at least had the medical drone hovering above my head and constantly healing me, somewhat relieving pain.

  So I decided to do Christine’s bidding until I came up with an idea of dealing with the girl and getting rid of the collar.

  Finally, we beat the third round. As usual, Christine turned down the reward––which was rare items, this time––and punched the button for the next––fourth––round.

  We beat it in ten tries. Every time we would die, we revived in the elevator. While it would descend, I racked my brain for trying to conceive some plan of extracting myself from this jam but to no avail.

  My armor made out of fabric would get reduced to shreds as I triggered the traps. Yet every time we revived in the elevator, I found out that my armor was brand-new again as if I hadn’t had debuffs placed on my character, which were dealing various elemental damage to me.

  Moreover, killing mobs gave us experience points, but after death, we lost all the exp gained during a round. In order to keep the exp, we had to get through a round without dying.

  Eventually, we completed the fourth round. The reward for accomplishing it was two rare items, shotgun and pistol. Christine didn’t even bother to examine the items’ stats. Instead, she punched the button to start the next round.

  The fifth––final––round wasn’t just the most difficult one. No, it was a sheer nightmare. The traps grew almost invisible by this point. The mobs became tougher and more aggressive. Also, mini-bosses started spawning, such as giants.

  I lost count of the number of times we got whacked. I felt totally hopeless and completely lost track of time. It seemed as if we had been re-playing the final round forever.

  We died another time and as usual revived in the elevator. Although I usually didn’t oppose Christine, I stood up to her this time.

  “Didn’t you grew sick of this yet?” I quizzed.

  “Of what exactly?” She wanted to know.

  “I mean all this mindless fighting,” I elaborated. “Do you really think we can finish it?”

  “We’ll beat it,” The girl stated confidently.

  “Switch on whatever passes for your brain and think about it,” I said rudely. I’d better hold my tongue but just couldn’t help it. “You never beat the Arena on your own. You said it yourself, remember? Now that there’re two of us, the mobs are twice as strong. But you’re dealing with them all by yourself. My triggering the traps isn’t enough. We have to act together to beat the Arena.”

  Christine stared daggers at me for a couple of moments. She looked as if she was about to snap at me. But then her expression softened.

  “So what do you suggest?” She asked.

  “Let’s quit it. Our chances of winning are slim and you know it.”

  “No,” Christine snapped. “I won’t quit it! Especially after what we’ve gone through. We only need to survive one more round to beat the Arena and get the legendries.”

  “If you don’t wanna quit, then why don’t you let me have my chitin armor and Ice Volcanos,” I said as calmly as I could manage, “so I can give way more assistance to you?”

  Christine seemed to turn over my offer in her mind. She seemed to be about to concede to what I wanted.

  “And take the collar off me,” I added. “Because it suppresses my psi-powers. I play as a Warlock, as you know. But if I can’t use my skills, I won’t be of much assistance to you.”

  Once I mentioned the slave collar, Christine’s facial expression hardened again.

  “No,” She snapped and without saying anything more, turned away from me.

  “I promise that I will help you to beat the Arena if you take the collar off me. I won’t either attack you or run away from you.”

  “Are you deaf? I said no!”

  Well, at least I had tried to reason with her. No dice. Then I would have to find another way to extricate myself from my predicament. And I promised myself that I would deal wit
h Christine. Sure, I have no idea how I was going to do it at the moment, but I resolved to keep my word, no matter what.

  The doors slid wide and we burst outside to start all over again. We would aggro the mobs, get ourselves killed, revive in the elevator, and go out of it to fight the mobs on end. It seemed to me that it would never end.

  After we revived in the elevator again, Christine turned to face me and stated, “Guess we need to rest. I got tired and I assume you’re exhausted as well. So let’s take a break for a few hours or so.”

  I was only too glad to have a brief respite. Although I didn’t say anything, my facial expression must have betrayed me.

  “Listen to me carefully,” She said in a clipped tone. “Don’t do anything foolish. You can’t do jack to fix this, so don’t even try. You can’t either enter the game in my absence or create a new character. If you’re planning on informing on me to the developers, then you’ll achieve nothing. They’ve known about this glitch of the Arena for long but can’t do anything to fix it.”

  I almost laughed out loud. That wasn’t the only bug in the game that the developers didn’t seem to fix. And it wasn’t the most crucial one, for sure.

  But I said nothing.

  “So don’t expect the developers to help you out,” Christine said. “Because they won’t.”

  That wasn’t new to me as well.

  Christine went silent for a moment and then she said, “When I go offline, you got disconnected as well. You can reconnect to the game only if I’m online. So we’re gonna need to get in touch IRL somehow. Do you have a Facebook account?”

  If only it had been that easy, I thought.

  “I’m fed up with you,” I replied. “And I have no desire to converse with you IRL. Just tell me when you’re gonna return and I’ll reconnect to the game at the same time.”

  The girl went livid and seemed to be about to snap at me. But then she got a grip on herself and said, “Fine. I’ll be back in twenty-four hours. So get back here tomorrow. So long.”

  I gave her a nod.

  The girl lifted her hand and looked at the crystal.

  Then a thought struck me. What would happen to me when Christine left the game? As I was trapped in the game, I would most likely to stay in here. But what about the slave collar wrapped around my neck? When I got too far away from the girl, the collar sent electrical power through my body. What if the collar would behave in the same manner after Christine went offline? I wasn’t all that keen on having my character electrocuted for twenty-four hours. No sirree. It wasn’t appealing to me at all.

  “Wait,” I cried out to Christine.

  Yet either the girl didn’t hear me shout or she ignored me on purpose, sulking over my last remark. Either way, she disappeared.

  I got rooted to the spot, prepared for the worst––

  Chapter three

  However, nothing happened. The girl had gone offline, but I was still in the game and the collar didn’t get activated to electrocute me. I even breathed a sigh of relief.

  First of all, I decided to get in touch with a friend of mine called Flynn. But a message popped up in the log, saying that he was offline.

  Sure, I had a few more acquaintances of mine––Melissa, Stan, and Guard––but unfortunately, they weren’t in my friend list, which was why I couldn’t get in touch with them.

  I could count only on myself. At least for the time being.

  First of all, I had to find out what I could do while Christine was absent and what I couldn’t.

  I walked up to the control panel to get a closer look at it. It had only two buttons. One read START ROUND 5 and the other one read QUIT THE ARENA. Yet the second button was inactive. I punched it anyway, but sure enough, nothing happened.

  As I had never paid much attention to the control panel before now, I couldn’t tell for sure whether the button was this way all the time or it had gotten inactive after Christine went offline.

  I punched the first button and the elevator began descending. The doors soon slid open. I walked outside, cautiously looking around. Soon angry screams filled the air and the swarm of mobs had me circled in. They pounced on me and ripped my character to ribbons.

  I revived in the elevator. So I can continue playing even when Christine was offline. Interesting. Sure, there was no way I could beat the final round without armor and weapons, but perhaps I could still benefit from it somehow.

  I punched the button again and the elevator began its descent. The mobs soon surrounded me from all directions again. This time, I decided not to let them kill me as easily as they had the last time.

  I picked a random direction and darted there with the swarm of monsters on my heels. A few mobs stood still in my path, waiting for me to get close to them. I hoped I would be able to shove them out of the way before they buried their claws in my body and killed me.

  I wished I had been able to use my psi-power. Everything would be much easier then. All I would have to do was envision myself using Surge and then the three mobs standing in my path would be scattered by dark energy.

  Suddenly, the three mobs got hurled backward after the Surge psi-power actually struck them. Only then did I realize that I could use my skill now for some reason. It amazed me so much than I even slacken my pace in surprise. I should’ve done this because the swarm of mobs instantly took advantage of it, encircling and slaying me.

  When I revived in the elevator, I checked my HUD to find out that my mana was slowly but surely replenishing. Which meant that the collar ceased negatively affecting me. That was good.

  Perhaps I even could take the collar off me now. It sure was worth a try.

  I ran my left hand along the curved length of the collar. To my great disappointment, I couldn’t find a clasp or any other means of unfastening the collar and taking it off my neck.

  So although the collar was deactivated, there seemed to be no way I could get rid of it on my own. I remembered that Flynn was going to learn about slave collars and how to deal with them. I sent my friend another message only to find out that he was still offline.

  I didn’t know what else I could do at the moment so I punched the button to re-start the fifth round.

  I ran around the level, using various psi-powers and avoiding getting into the traps. When my mana got depleted, I could no longer protect myself against the mobs and they wasted me.

  I re-started the final round a few more times, running around, employing my psi-powers, and ultimately getting killed. Still, no bright idea occurred to me thus far.

  After I revived in the elevator another time, I received a notification that Flynn was online now. As I was about to write to him, but he beat me to it. Flynn had some good news. He said that to take the collar off, I needed to create a special device.

  However, I couldn’t do it. I had either no unused skill points to unlock the required skill nor the resources to create such a device.

  Then I told Flynn about the Arena and the glitch Christine had caused. Flynn didn’t know anything about this glitch but he promised to find out. After that, he went offline again to scour the forum.

  I punched the button to re-play the final round. As the elevator was descending, I racked my brain trying to think something up. Running around the level and dying at the hands of the mobs had done no good. I had to do something else to find a way to leave the Arena.

  A thought occurred to me. Could I get out of the lift somehow?

  I looked around but didn’t spot any hatches. The only way out was the double door in front of me. I walked up to it, pondering on if the elevator doors could be opened.

  Then I wedged the tips of my fingernails into the barely noticeable slit between a pair of the doors and exerted all my strength to move them. Nothing happened at first, but then the doors succumbed to the pressure and slid in the opposite directions.

  What I saw in front of me made me gasp.

  Only then did I learn that the ele
vator hadn’t been descending. It always stayed at the same level. When we punched the button, the doors slid close and the elevator car began humming and vibrating slightly, which was why it seemed as though the elevator car was descending down the shaft. But in fact, it was immobile all the time as on the other side of the doors the level was randomly being generated.

  I looked through the doorway at the vast pitch-black expanse outside. It seemed to be infinite. Perhaps it was the case.

  Lowering my head, I looked down. The blackness was bottomless. It would be a very long, if not endless, fall were I to unintentionally tumble out of the elevator. The mere thought of falling into that coal-black abyss made me took a step backward from the doorway.

  Finally, I tore my eyes off the jet-black void and looked at what was happening a distance of 30 or so yards ahead of the elevator.

  The sight was awe-inspiring, all right.

  Huge blocks materialized out of the air. Some of them broke into smaller ones and the others not. The blocks all converged on themselves to form corridors and chambers of various sizes, creating a complete level.

  It took the blocks a few minutes to finish the level. In front of me was a corridor. Yet I wasn’t all that keen to leave the elevator now that I know that behind the walls was the endless blackness.

  What if I passed completely through the floor to drop into the abyss outside?

  Eventually, I snapped out of it and took a cautious step forward, entering the corridor. Sure enough, I didn’t fall through the floor.

  As I wandered around the level, I realized that the level wasn’t done generating yet. Flying round-shaped white-colored drones the size of a basketball were negotiating the corridors. They ignored me completely, darting past me without slowing down.

  As I was watching one of them fly down the corridor I was in, I mused over something. When you looked at another player, NPC, or item, their stats always popped up in your HUD. Yet no matter how long I watched the round drones, no information about them appeared.

  There was something strange about those white drones. Something worried me, but I couldn’t place my finger on the cause.