One grabbed each of his arms, holding him in place as their long claws dug through his arm guards and gambeson sleeves, damaging the armor but not yet dealing damage. The third Defaced took up position in front of him, slashing its claws to cut through the gambeson’s padding. None of them tried stabbing him, which would have gone right through his armor, and for that Joshua was thankful. Their stupidity bought him enough time to come up with a plan.
He couldn’t kill them with a single knife swing, not without leaving himself defenseless from the other two, so Joshua had no choice but to use some of his precious ammo. He wrenched his right arm, still holding the pistol, free from the Defaced’s grip. He lost the armguard and took about 50 damage in the process, but it was worth the cost. His right arm brought the gun around, shooting the Defaced holding his left arm in the head.
Critical Hit! Skull Pierced! Defaced has taken 1000 damage
Level 3 Defaced has died!
Zandrius gains 40 EXP
It was just enough EXP to level him up, but Joshua couldn’t do it just yet. He still had two Defaced trying to attack him. They were getting desperate, the loss of two allies and the crippling of a third turning the situation against them. Joshua’s left hand, now free, brought the knife around and cleaved one of the Defaced’s arm off. It didn’t stop there, continuing its path and cleaving several inches into the monster’s chest.
The creature went limp, slumping to the side. Joshua could tell it was dead, but he didn’t have time to check the notification as the fifth and final Defaced finally managed to attack. It went for his head, as he had done for its allies. Unfortunately for the poor monster, Joshua still had his helmet on. It was still un-upgraded and not strong enough to take a direct slash, but it was strong enough to hold as the Defaced’s claw glanced off it.
Joshua brought the knife around once again, pushing the Defaced backward at the same time. He followed the monster back, stabbing the knife into its chest until it stopped moving. Finally getting a free moment, Joshua took a few seconds to spend his EXP and level up at last. He had reached level 8, and his HP had finally crossed the 1000 mark. It had taken a lot of effort, but he had finally reached the point that most players would start at.
There was still one Defaced left, the one whose arms he had taken at the start of the fight. It had been watching the whole time, waiting for its allies to kill the thing that had crippled it. It stared unbelievingly for a moment at this strange creature that had massacred its comrades before turning and sprinting away. The Defaced made for an almost comical sight, flailing around without its arms as it tried to escape. Joshua put a single bullet into its back, putting the poor monster out of its misery.
Once the fighting had ended, Joshua took a moment to enjoy the silence that had fallen over the supercenter. Wait, silence? Joshua took a startled look around the area. It wasn’t supposed to be silent, there was supposed to be a war. Instead, the area was littered with the corpses of monsters.
More than two-thirds of the monsters in the dungeon have been killed!
Event: War of the Fallen has ended!
The bodies of at least a dozen Brutes and over 50 Defaced were scattered everywhere. They were shredded, torn apart, ripped to pieces and half eaten. He could see the few zombies still alive hobbling, injured, back to where they had come from. Joshua had never seen a more beautiful sight. Three Plague Eyes immediately set out, absorbing as much Pestilence as they could. The Defaced were already an amazing bonus, but that many Brutes would make this an absurd increase in power.
As Joshua started heading back to the shopping cart alcove to let the Plague Eyes do their work, he spotted movement near where he had been fighting. The other Brute, the one that he had pulled the Defaced away from, was still alive. Around it was the corpses of the six Defaced it had been fighting, all crushed or ripped apart. The Brute itself was in bad shape, missing a leg and large chunks of flesh, but still alive.
Zombie Brute
Remaining HP: 197/1000
Joshua fired a single bullet, putting the injured monster down. He still had four bullets left, but there weren’t any more easily killable zombies nearby, so he headed back towards the alcove. When he arrived, he sat back in his old spot and began to wait for the eyes to return. It took nearly half an hour for the eyes to drain every bit of Pestilence from the corpses, during which time he reloaded his guns and healed a bit. When the eyes finally came back, Joshua was ecstatic with the results.
Name: Zandrius
Race: Zombie
Class: Epidemic Warrior
Tier: 2
Level: 8 EXP: 280/800
HP: 640/1000 Regen: 7.5/min while Pestilence capped
Pestilence: 300/300 Regen: 30/min
His maximum Pestilence had risen all the way to 300, an almost unthinkable amount compared to what he had before. This would be a massive power boost…is what Joshua thought until he stopped to think about it for a second. While it was true that his Pestilence was increased, and his regeneration had skyrocketed with it, everything was still so expensive. At 25 Pestilence per bullet, he could only fire 12 shots at once before running dry, less if he used Plague or Explosive Eyes at the same time.
Much more valuable was the increased regeneration. With the 300 Pestilence came a generation of 30 per minute, a much more useful stat. With this, he could upgrade his gear faster and stay in combat much longer. His HP regeneration from Pestilence Sacrifice was up to 7.5 HP per second, an almost useful amount. It would still be a few thousand Pestilence before it was good enough to be helpful in combat, but it would get there eventually.
Joshua knew the zombies would respawn eventually, but he had no idea what their respawn time would be. Figuring it would be at least a few hours and having nothing better to do, he sat back down and starting pumping Pestilence into his equipment.
The arm-guards and leg-guards only took 100 Pestilence each, taking just a few minutes with his current generation to upgrade. Their defense doubled from 25 to 50, becoming slightly denser in the process. Joshua’s helmet did the same, its defense jumping from 50 to 100. Raising his hand and banging on the metal helmet, Joshua could hear an audible clanging sound.
Every piece of gear he had now required 500 Pestilence or more to upgrade. Not a small amount, but not nearly as daunting a number as it had been previously. Joshua upgraded his gambeson, raising its defense from 100 to 200. It felt heavier, pulling on his chest as if there was a weight in it. Feeling around, the padded gambeson had small metal plates woven into the chest section.
Using the flying eyes to take one last glance around the supercenter, Joshua was disappointed with what was left. Only a small handful of Defaced and Brutes were left from the war, wandering around aimlessly. Whatever routes they had traveled previously had been disrupted by the war, causing them to meander around the store and kill anything that came too close. Not a single zombie had respawned yet.
Joshua was starting to feel tired, mentally drained from the recent events. He had lost track of time, but it had to have been at least several hours since he had arrived at the dungeon. Macrocosm’s brain implant may have helped keep him awake and alert in the short term, but it wasn’t a true replacement for real sleep. The zombies weren’t showing any sign of respawning soon, so Joshua leaned back against the wall and logged out.
Everything went dark, and Joshua opened his eyes back in his room, still lying on his bed. Light was coming in through the window and a quick glance at his digital clock showed it was a little past noon. He had been playing Macrocosm for almost twelve hours with only a small break in the middle, no wonder he was so tired.
There was still so much left to do. He needed to get something to eat, check the Macrocosm website and forums for news, research potential ways to get ahead faster, and more. But before he did any of that, Joshua laid his head back down on his pillow and closed his eyes again. It was time for a good long sleep.
Chapter 11
We knew that Macrocosm needed
something more than just quests, dungeons and PVP. It needed something to make the playable worlds more interesting, and so we created the Event System. Whenever a certain set of circumstances is met, a special event can trigger anywhere in the world, including inside dungeons. These events aren’t entirely random, nor are they recurring. Every event is created on the spot by Macrocosm’s overseer AI when it determines that exceptional circumstances have occurred. These circumstances could be literally anything. Maybe you massacred thousands of monsters, maybe you killed a single monster in the wrong place or time, maybe it triggered from a conversation or because a specific item dropped. The effects of these events are normally temporary, but they can be long-lasting, or even permanent.” – On Macrocosm Mechanics, from the Chronicles of The Founder
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It was dark outside by the time Joshua woke up. He had slept well into the evening dreaming about what he would do next in Macrocosm. Of course, he had already forgotten those dreams, but he was excited nonetheless. Before he could start the game again and get back to work, there was research to do.
It had been nearly 20 hours since Macrocosm released, and the internet was already exploding with information. Game reviewers had it pegged as the best game ever created, owing to its unheard-of immersion and exciting gameplay. Forums were going down from the stress as tens of millions of players shared what they had learned. Perhaps most exciting to Joshua was the real-world auction house.
As it was at the start of every major game release, players were selling below-average items for absurdly high prices. Some items, many of them weaker than Joshua’s own Soul-Bound equipment, were selling for several hundred credits each. Joshua nearly drooled at the sight. If he could find a way to synthesize non-bound equipment, it would be like printing money!
While the auction house was the most exciting thing he saw, the average player statistics were arguably more important. Joshua had racked up a big lead over other players in terms of level, though not in power, before logging off. That gap had quickly closed while he was asleep, but he still had the edge. The average players were approaching their first class-ups and evolutions right now, with most of the more advanced professionals like him having already gained a few levels in their tier 2 class.
Joshua got all of this information from the official leaderboards set up by the company behind Macrocosm, O. While checking the top players, Joshua entered his own character’s name and was surprised with what he found.
2339th place: Zandrius
Class: Epidemic Warrior
Tier: 2
Level: 8
Joshua’s character was in the top 10,000. He had been away from the game for eight hours and he was still among the highest-level players. Perhaps the growth speed of a zombie was a little higher than he had thought. If it wasn’t for the Drudge Bear, who knows how far ahead he could have already gotten…
Curious about who had surpassed him, Joshua looked at the higher spots on the list. Most of the players in the top 1500 had already reached tier 3, but only a single person had surpassed that. At the top of the list, in the number one spot on the leaderboard, was a tier 4 class.
1st Place: Foundation
Class: Chaos Sorcerer
Tier: 4
Level: 2
Whoever Foundation was, they were heads and tails above everyone else. 2nd place was nearly seven levels behind them in total. They had either spawned as something with an even bigger handicap than Joshua did, or found some sort of abusable game mechanic. Whichever it was didn’t matter too much right now, and every second staring at the leaderboards was a second lost, so Joshua lied back down and logged in.
He was greeted by the familiar sight of the dungeon walls and the sound of shuffling zombies. The dungeon inhabitants had respawned while he was away, and Joshua had a smile on his face as a result. Respawned enemies meant more EXP, and as he had just learned, there was still a long way to go to the top.
Three specially-made Plague eyes went out to thin the herd. Joshua decided to try and abuse his new massive Pestilence cap by creating three separate flying eyes with 100 Pestilence each. The results were disgusting, almost head-sized abominations that barely deserved the title of an eye. They were perfect.
When the eyes reached the newly respawned Spitter zombie packs, they wreaked havoc. Each eye tore through a separate pack like wet paper, killing zombies in seconds as they broke apart into massive clouds of Pestilence. The eyes were so strong that entire packs fell in less than a minute, including the Spitter at the lead, all without the need for an Explosive Eye.
Less than 20 minutes later, all the Spitter packs were dead, Joshua was level 9, and his maximum Pestilence had risen to 350. Next up was the Bloaters and the Defaced, both of which the eyes were strong enough to kill, but slowly. Joshua still couldn’t approach the Bloaters for fear of being covered by their acid or triggering another war, so he had the Plague Eyes hunt them down while he personally targeted the Defaced.
The Defaced, as he had predicted, were no longer a threat to him. Joshua didn’t hesitate to open fire with his pistol the moment he found one, killing it instantly. The main problem with hunting the Defaced was no longer the danger, but the difficulty of finding them. That was when a brilliant idea got into Joshua’s head.
He just needed to make a lot of noise and the Defaced would come to him. The biggest issue was the Brutes, who would undoubtedly come too, but that could work to his advantage. The Brutes would work as a good distraction while he picked off Defaced from the backline. If the plan worked, they might never even know he was there.
Joshua created an Explosive Eye, keeping it close to him so that it didn’t break apart. So long as the eye didn’t travel too far, he could maintain its form while also manipulating the other three. This Explosive Eye was made with the absolute minimum amount of Pestilence to make the sound when it popped as quiet as possible.
The plan worked almost too well. Within seconds of the quiet detonation, tens of Defaced were scrambling through the area and the Brutes had already begun rampaging. It wasn’t quite so big as the War of the Fallen Event had been, but it was close and getting bigger. Joshua’s main regret about the event was that most of the zombies had killed each-other, stripping him of the potential EXP gain. He was determined to make sure that didn’t happen again.
Joshua took up a position as far from the conflict as possible and opened fire, thinning the horde of Defaced before the Brutes tore into them. None of the Defaced even noticed his presence or the exploding body parts of their comrades. They were all too preoccupied with the fighting to care about some figured standing tens of feet away.
Joshua watched with glee as the EXP notifications started piling in. It was such a nice sight that he almost missed the tides of battle turning against the Defaced. He had thinned the herd a little too much in his excitement, and the Brutes now had the upper hand. Switching tactics, Joshua formed a large Explosive Eye and sent it after a Brute. The three Plague Eyes had already finished cleaning up the Bloater’s around the dungeon, he just hadn’t had time to check the spoils yet.
The Eye, packed with a whopping 150 Pestilence, flew right up to the Brute’s face and exploded. The muscled zombie never stood a chance as its head vanished, its torso ruptured, and its limbs were torn apart. Perhaps 150 had been a little overkill, but Joshua didn’t want to take any chances given how strong the Brutes had proven to be. Besides, with his new Pestilence generation, it would only take a few minutes to get it all back.
Event Triggered! War of the Fallen!
The explosion had been a little too loud, triggering more fighting all over the dungeon. This was the worst-case scenario, but it wasn’t all that bad. It just meant that Joshua had to speed up his killing, something he was more than happy to do. He was starting to run low on Pestilence from the constant shooting and the Explosive Eye, but it wasn’t something that a few minutes of stabbing Defaced wouldn’t solve.
Joshua dove into the back of the
Defaced horde, cutting them down with one or two strokes of his knife each. Each kill got a little easier as he learned more about the Defaced. The slight way they moved when they realized they were under attack, how they would pull away when the knife hit them, every detail made the next kill easier. By the time he was noticed, it was too late. Half of the Defaced were dead and the other half couldn’t turn away from the Brutes to attack him.
A similar sight was playing out across the dungeon, with the Defaced and Brutes constantly gaining and losing ground in their own self-contained conflicts. Three more 100 Pestilence Plague Eyes were created and scattered across the supercenter as Joshua’s recovered his energy. The eyes still weren’t strong enough to kill Brutes on their own, so they focused entirely on the Defaced.
With the eyes ripping the skinless monsters apart at a terrifying pace, Joshua turned his focus to the larger Brutes. Even with all his recent growth, killing a Zombie Brute in close combat still frightened him, but it was a bridge he needed to cross at some point. As powerful as the pistol was, its cost meant he couldn’t always be using it. Joshua knew he needed to be at least strong enough to hold his own if he ran out of Pestilence.
While trying to think of a plan, Joshua turned to his Pestilence Sacrifice ability. It automatically converted any Pestilence generated over his limit into HP, but was it possible to take things one step further? Joshua remembered back to the sustained abilities of the other games he had played, and how they worked.
Sanctum Page 11