It was only now that Kai noticed that Stan and the others weren’t actually frozen. They still moved, yet in super-slow-motion. He could see Stan’s eyes blink. His beautiful elven face frowning.
This was absolutely incredible!
But then he remembered why he was here in the first place. Everyone was in danger, including him. Whatever was happening, he had to stop it. But how the hell could he do that?
He remembered the ‘magic’ the Alpha team was capable of only too well. But he was only a Level One tester. He could open the console and send a bug ticket.
Actually, why not?
He opened the bug ticket editor and typed in a message using his thoughts.
Game engine compromised. Potential hack. Request immediate support.
A second later, he had sent it on its way with the highest priority. Hopefully it would reach the game studio. Or Helltek… or anyone who could fix this mess!
Kai wondered what his friends were seeing now. Was the game continuing for them? Or were they, too, seeing the dragon in T-pose? Somehow he felt like a traveler in another dimension – or a ghost.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something that ripped him out of his thoughts violently.
Something was moving.
He spun around and realized that he wasn’t alone in the sandbox. Somebody else was here. Somebody he hadn’t expected at all.
She stood at the other side of the arena, looking at him. Her arms crossed. Then she slowly moved toward him.
“Smart boy to enter the console,” she said in her typically calm but now also condescending voice. “But I expected nothing less from you, Kai.”
He stared at her in disbelief.
“Life… You did this?”
LifeSupport spread her arms, coming closer.
“I did. Do you like it?”
He could now see her face clearly as she walked past the lizard toy soldier army. Although it was the same avatar as she always used, he hardly recognized her. Her beautiful features were contorted into a gleeful, malicious grin.
“No!” he shouted angrily. “I don’t! Why the hell would you do this?”
“That’s none of your concern, little one. You’ll be dead in a moment. And so will everyone else trapped here.”
“You want to kill all these people? What have they done to you?”
Kai was horrified, yet somewhere deep inside, a cool, calculated voice was telling him to stall her until help arrived.
Slowly, he approached her until they met in front of the T-posed dragon.
She shrugged. “Nothing. Wrong place at the wrong time, I guess. They’ll be a wonderful demonstration subject though.”
“You were responsible for the spider incident too…”
“Smart boy. You’re almost too valuable to be sacrificed here… but it is what it is.”
“Why?” Kai asked again, and it wasn’t just a stalling tactic. He couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening here.
“The people I represent have their reasons,” she replied as a virtual keyboard appeared at her fingertips, and they began typing with inhuman speed.
“You’re a hacker,” Kai said.
“Clueless dimwits might call me so,” she said. “But I’m so much more than that.”
A greenish, glowing beam expanded from her keyboard and formed a rectangular shape. Then the whole construct sank to the ground. The surface textures disappeared where it made contact with the terrain, creating something like an oversized trap door – leading into nowhere. It reminded Kai of the clipping glitch he had fallen into the other day. But the darkness inside this one appeared way more horrifying.
Satisfied with her work, LifeSupport turned her attention back to Kai.
“It was lovely chatting with you, Kai,” she said with a smirk. “I wish we could spend more quality time together, but life isn’t always what we wish for, right? I hope you enjoy the barbecue as you’re going to be the main course.”
Kai wanted to reply with something, but he didn’t get the chance.
Again, her fingers flew over the keyboard with incredible speed.
>exit_dev_mode
>terminate_dev_mode_access
Dev_Mode UNAVAILABLE
Kai was back in the game.
She had not only kicked him out of the console, but she had also terminated his sandbox access! How in the world was that possible?!
Everything around him was in turmoil.
He heard screams and the crackling sound of fire. An unpleasant smell of charred flesh was in the air.
The realization struck him like lightning. He hadn’t stopped the world when entering the console. That, of course, wasn’t possible. By entering the sandbox, he had basically entered a different layer of the game, whereas the main game kept rolling unhindered. Of course, anything else would have been impossible in an MMORPG.
But Kai didn’t have time to contemplate that now.
He saw a shadow moving in his peripheral vision. Following his instinct, he roll-dodged away, lightning-fast.
Not one second too soon. A gigantic paw stomped on the ground exactly where he had been standing with the intention of turning him into pulp. Feeling the ground vibrate under the impact, he jumped back to his feet.
That was close!
Kai lifted his head and stared directly into the flaming eyes of the Dragon King, who had apparently decided to eat him first.
Baldurian opened his maw, showing two rows of gigantic teeth. And something else. Fire.
Coming up his throat, it would burst out at any second and burn Kai to a crisp.
But to his own surprise, he wasn’t scared. His mind worked faster and in a more focused way than ever before in his life.
OPEN CONSOLE
>enter_god_mode
Kai performed this action faster than he thought he ever could. It was his tester’s ‘life insurance’, as Topher had called it – and it worked! The hacker hadn’t been able to disable that one.
Within the blink of an eye, the dragon unleashed his devastating fire breath upon Kai. A massive cloud of fire shot out of the dragon’s maw.
Kai closed his eyes.
But nothing happened!
Opening one eye, he saw that he was surrounded by a massive fireball, but the flames couldn’t touch him. They were repelled by invisible boundaries. It wasn’t like a damage shield but more like an invisible sphere that surrounded him, preventing any harm from reaching him.
After a few seconds, the fire attack ended and Kai was staring into the malicious dragon’s eyes again.
“Whoa, mate,” he heard Stan’s disbelieving voice. “How the bloody fuck did you do that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kai replied calmly. “Stay back! All of you! Regroup as far away from the dragon as possible!”
“Listen to the man!” Stan shouted to the group. “He’s with Cyber Squad! He’s gonna kick that wanker’s ass!”
His friend’s enthusiastic words made Kai’s stomach tingle. Yes, he was with Cyber Squad. And he had to hold the line until backup arrived. Hopefully.
The dragon’s maw snapped down at him, the massive jaws open and ready to swallow him. Whoever had designed this monster had done an amazing job – it was scary as fuck!
Yet the jaws and razor-sharp teeth bounced off Kai’s invisible sphere. No matter how big and strong the Dragon King was, he couldn’t get past the god mode boundary.
Kai felt euphoria and courage fueling him. The monster couldn’t hurt him anymore, but he could hurt the monster! He waited for the next attack.
When the dragon’s maw snapped down again to try and swallow him, he leaped up in the air and landed on the dragon’s head.
Furious, Baldurian jerked his head up, but Kai grabbed one of the massive horns on his head to stabilize himself. He drew his sword and began slashing at the dragon’s eyes. Red numbers flashed all around him as well as multiple Critical Hit! messages.
He knew he couldn’t kill the monster
by himself, no matter how many critical hits he landed. After all, Baldurian had ten million health points. But he could keep him occupied, and that was all that mattered now.
Suddenly he heard a loud whistle, and someone called out: “Hey, Kai!”
He lifted his head from his bloody business and saw LifeSupport standing right in front of the dragon.
“Nice try,” she chuckled.
Then she performed a gesture with her hand and a portal opened next to her, similar to the one the Alpha team had used.
“So long,” she said, waving, and then she disappeared through the portal, which immediately closed behind her.
>exit_god_mode
>terminate_god_mode_access
>terminate_console_access
CONSOLE ACCESS DISABLED
It took Kai a second to realize the full extent of what had just happened. The hacker had disabled all the tools granted to him by Helltek. He stopped his brain from trying to figure out how the hell that was possible and instead focused on more urgent matters…
His god mode was gone! Meaning he was as vulnerable as any other player on the field. And he was sitting on the head of a fucking Godzilla-sized dragon!
It was almost as if the NPC knew that, too, as he jerked his head in such an abrupt way that Kai lost his grip on the horn. He tumbled down the dragon’s head and snout. Right before he fell off the monster, Baldurian jerked his head again, throwing Kai up into the air, like a dog throwing up a toy to catch it in mid-air.
Terror filled Kai as he realized what was about to happen. Helpless, he flailed his arms and legs as he was catapulted into the air. Then he reached the point when gravity took over. Falling, he stared right into the dragon’s maw.
What would happen to him? What would his real-life body experience when his virtual one was eaten alive?
Kai closed his eyes.
Suddenly he noticed something. The wind rushing by his ears as he fell stopped. The air was completely still. And so was everything else.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that another portal had opened.
And what he saw next would have brought tears into his eyes if his avatar had been capable of crying.
Alice.
She was the first one to jump through the portal, followed by the entire Level Ten Alpha squad. One thing was clear – those guys certainly knew how to make an entrance. They had saved his ass at the very last second.
Or maybe not.
Like last time, they hadn’t stopped the game but curbed the FPS rate to a minimum. Kai was still falling directly into the dragon’s maw. It would simply take a bit longer until he landed between the frightening teeth.
But the Alpha squad wasn’t up for games.
The tech, wearing a helmet that covered his face like last time, summoned his virtual keyboards and two virtual holo-screens. Whatever the hacker had done to the code, this guy would fix it. He had to.
Kai turned his attention to Alice, and their eyes met. For a moment, she looked back at him and time really seemed to freeze, at least for Kai.
A determined expression filled her beautiful elfin face, then she stormed toward the Dragon King.
Kai watched with fascination as she moved with speed while everything around her appeared like it was stuck in glue.
Alice jumped onto the dragon’s foot and from there onto his slightly bent knee. Using her incredible momentum, she leaped up. Her hands reached the edge of the dragon’s wing. In the blink of an eye, she had pulled herself up and was speeding over the extended wing. From there, she jumped onto Baldurian’s shoulder, ran up his outstretched neck and an instant later had reached his head. Kai’s jaw dropped.
Not only was she, in this moment, the most beautiful creature imaginable to him. What she had just done was beyond spectacular – and badass.
But she wasn’t done yet.
Alice reached the maw and fearlessly climbed up the dragon’s teeth until she stood on top of his nose.
“Hi,” she said, looking up to Kai with a smile. “I thought you could use a hand.”
“Um, kinda,” he replied, and he felt stupid at the same moment the words left his mouth.
But he was mesmerized. By her. And by the whole crazy situation.
Alice extended her arms and grabbed him with surprising strength for such a delicate, slender creature. She pulled him down to her. For a moment, their faces were very close, and he gazed into her big purple eyes. Her avatar was breathtaking, yet somewhere behind those oversized eyes were her real, dark blue ones and, behind those, her soul.
She took his hand.
“Trust me.”
He nodded, unable to say anything slightly intelligent.
Alice jumped, pulling him with her. They plummeted down from the dragon’s head. Fear grabbed Kai’s heart.
In the current state of the game, would he survive such an fall? After all, Baldurian had the height of a four-story building.
Just before they hit the ground, suddenly their fall was slowed down.
Instead of crashing into the rocky terrain, they now floated down onto it like a feather.
Ripping away his attention from Alice, Kai looked around and saw that the tech had extended his arm toward them. A thin ribbon of code extended from his hand toward Alice and Kai. The tech slowly moved his hand down and set the two safely down on the ground. All this while he kept hammering on the virtual keyboard with his other hand.
“Thank you,” Kai whispered.
She smiled, and it felt like there was a swarm of butterflies in his belly.
“It’s my job, remember?” Before he could answer anything in response, she turned serious. “Retreat to the rest of your group now. We’ll handle this.”
Kai nodded, shifting his attention from her to the rest of her team, who were standing ready. He caught a death stare from Raven that was almost as frightening as the dragon behind him.
Then, suddenly, the FPS rate was back to normal.
The dragon’s jaws snapped into each other, devouring only air where Kai should have been.
“Go!” Alice urged him, then spun around to her team.
Kai froze, seeing her approaching them. She would walk right into the area the hacker had turned into a giant trap door! Only now did it become clear to him that Life had set that trap for them and no one else. She had been expecting the Cyber Squad to show up. And, of course, they didn’t disappoint.
Alice couldn’t see the trap as it appeared like normal ground, but if she stepped onto it, she would clip through the floor – into who knew where. Kai was sure as hell that it wouldn’t be such a simple clipping glitch as the one he had experienced. And even that one had turned out to be extremely frightening and dangerous.
“Alice! Stop!” he called after her.
But she either didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear. Most likely she was using another secure channel with her team.
“Alice!” he sprinted after her.
He wouldn’t make it in time to save her. Remembering exactly where the trap was, Kai could see that Alice was only two steps away from it. Her waist-long white hair swung behind her as she approached the others in a resolute way.
Kai had only one chance. He activated Shield Bash, an ability of his character class. It allowed him to cover a distance over several feet at unnatural speed and bash his shield into an enemy.
But instead of an enemy, Kai bashed into Alice with full force.
She spun her head, and he could see her puzzled expression as she was thrown several feet through the air – and out of harm’s way.
For Kai, however, it was too late to stop his momentum. Saving Alice, he fell right into the trap the hacker had set for the Cyber Squad.
***
Kai fell. Into a seemingly endless abyss.
This was different from the clipping glitch he had encountered the other day. He knew that at once. At first, he saw beams of light, vectors, geometrical forms, and other assets that indicated that he was in the part of th
e game usually hidden under the surface.
But this time, there was nothing to grab or get stuck in. Nothing that could stop or slow down his fall. On the contrary. He seemed to travel faster with every second that passed. Seconds that seemed like minutes. Minutes that seemed like hours.
The structures around him resolved into ribbons of light, swooshing past him like shooting stars.
Pure code appeared around him. Endless columns, forming a universe of data. Racing up and down and in every direction. Data streams passed by him at light speed.
Kai was both fascinated and horrified as he watched what was unfolding around him. He didn’t know for sure, but he assumed that this wasn’t the game engine anymore. He had somehow left its boundaries and was traveling through the Net itself. The vastness around him was intimidating and suffocating. He felt like an astronaut floating through space, realizing how endless it was – and how tiny he was.
His head began spinning as he lost all sense of time and space. He couldn’t tell if he was falling, floating or rising anymore. The code around him slowly became darker and darker until it was black on black. It was still there, somehow he could tell. It was what held this whole place together, whatever and wherever it was – like dark matter holding the universe together.
The deeper he went, the more detached Kai felt from the world outside. His life, his body. All was meaningless here. He knew he was going to die, but he wasn’t scared. A strange tranquility had muffled all his emotions and thoughts.
Then he saw something. Far, far away at first. Light. Shining blue light in the darkness.
It came closer, and he saw that it was code. Streams of blue code. Pulsating, as if it were alive.
Suddenly it took the shape of a figure. A human figure consisting of blue, living code.
“Hello, Kai.”
The voice was neither female nor male, neither loud nor a whisper. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was friendly and benevolent, yet beyond the surface it had something cold about it. And frightening.
“How do you know my name?”
Somewhere deep inside his head, a thought formed that this was probably the most stupid thing to have asked in such a situation, but it didn’t bother him. The tranquility swallowed it.
Cyber Squad - Level 1: A Gamelit/LitRPG Lite Cyberpunk Adventure Page 29