by Arthur Stone
This pickup was no tank, to be sure. But decent experience with a heavy machine gun? That was a surprise. Perhaps he was receiving huge penalties and didn’t know it.
As if he would mind. In one fell swoop, he had pumped his base stats and zipped up to level eleven. Willpower had received a good boost, too—and as far as he knew, boosts to that stat only came when immunes successfully used their magical powers. Meaning that Smile of Fortune had played a significant part in his killing of the elite. The creature had taken a number of heavy rounds during his ability’s eight seconds, and some of those had been sent by Luck to the exact point where they needed to go—where the elite’s armor had already been damaged.
Soon even a long-range takedown of a raffler would only give him as much as taking down a runner. He was perilously close to min-maxing.
Cheater smacked himself on the good side of his face. He was wasting time. There were things to do, no matter how much he just wanted to lie still.
He was acting as though he lay in the safest of stables, not in a slaughterhouse smelling of gunpowder, of blood, and of excrement.
It might not be long until new creatures appeared, drawn by the scents of battle, and finished off the exhausted player.
Cheater checked his meters. Stamina, Pleasure, and Thirst had fallen, but not to critical levels. Even though his wounds were moderate, he seemed to have lost a bucket’s worth of blood. His terrible-looking thing wound from the raffler scratch would be healed by his immune powers soon enough.
Wait, something’s blinking. A chat message had just arrived from March.
“Hey buddy, you asleep over there? Why didn’t you wish me good night?”
“I’m in a bid of a bind here.”
“Good! That’s your favorite hobby. Getting into binds. Look, you should switch to beer. It’s a much simpler habit.”
“I’m serious, March. Remember when I said I wanted to check on that pickup?”
“The one the ghouls chased into the tunnel? I recall not advising you to follow through with that plan.”
“I followed through.”
“And there’s where this bind you speak of was waiting for you, am I right? Yet despite my wise warning, this somehow surprised you?”
“The pickup was well stocked. But I ended up have to shoot infecteds with the big gun. The noise drew more, and the fight took more than an hour. Thankfully the pickup had a 14.5mm machine gun with a number of ammo belts.”
“You just fired a heavy machine gun in the middle of a city for more than an hour?”
“Yes.”
“Well, congratulations on your respawn, then. How long ago did you come to? I didn’t even notice the message about you dying. Sorry, beer is a distracting thing. It’s a demanding mistress, you know. Keeps me focused on it, and I forget to check even the party window.”
“I’m alive, actually. They didn’t kill me. Well—not yet, anyway.”
“I have a hard time believing that.”
“The hell would I lie to you for?”
“Indeed. So it’s a miracle, then. Another bloody miracle.”
“Just got luck.”
“Your luck comes through for you suspiciously often, you know. So did these opponents of yours all fall to their doom by slipping on banana peels again? And all at the same time? Right onto the iron stakes that just happened to be stuck in the pavement?”
“You must be too drunk to be funny today, March.”
“Hey, the Comedian class wasn’t for me. So tell me what happened.”
“Not much to tell. I got trapped underground in an old, half-finished tunnel. Sound must not carry far from once it gets out of here, and what does escape is all distorted. Plus, a big storm hit, and with the flood of rain, the flood of ghouls died down. The System just gave me the victory message.”
“Sometimes the System likes to joke around with those, but the fight is probably over.”
“Only temporarily. I’m not even going to try to convince you how many corpses are down here now. You’ll never believe me. I didn’t take any serious wounds, but I’m pretty scratched up. Lost a pail’s worth of blood, so I’m having trouble thinking and just want to sleep.”
“Just tell me. Now I’m curious.”
“Fine. There are four hundred and fifty corpses down here. In my current state, it’ll take me a week to gut them all.”
“What? Near five hundred dead? I think you’re adding a zero by mistake.”
“Four hundred fifty-eight. That’s what the System said. It didn’t even bother to give me a complete log. Just sent the details straight to the archive. They were crowded in here so tightly at times that one round from this machine gun punched through five of them at once. Mostly little guys, but some runners too. If you still feel like congratulating me, though, I’m level eleven now.”
“Eleven? Just after a crowd like that? Don’t lie to us old guys, Cheater. If you killed an army like that, you’d get three levels at least.”
“I used the machine gun for most of the big kills. And it’s strong enough to take out several with one round, like I said. So the System docked my experience. And put basically all of what remained towards Accuracy. Since that’s not a base stat, I only got one level.”
“Sounds plausible. But I still don’t think I believe you. You’ve kept the truth from me before, after all.”
“Think whatever you want, March, but this argument isn’t helping. Unless I can gut these half-thousand carcasses by morning, something will show up to finish me off. I’m in bad shape. Doubt I could handle a pair of runners without making noise. And when I’m all out of serious ammo, noise is a bad thing.”
“Sorry, buddy, but I’m just too far away. Plus, I’ve got different plans for tonight.”
“Plans? Are you kidding me? You have no idea how much loot is here waiting for the taking. I can barely move, so there’s no way I’ll get a tenth of the treasure in time. Come share the loot, March. And fast. Get here however you can. Hire a complement of guards, if you want, and none of you will regret it, I promise. We’ll take all the loot and divvy it up, fifty-fifty. Win-win situation.”
“You’ve forgotten the shit world you’ve gotten yourself into, Cheat. All the treasures of the Continent wouldn’t be enough to get me to your cluster before morning came.”
“Well, dammit.”
“So if miracles happen, and you’re telling me the truth, get the hell out of there. Gut the most valuable ghouls as fast as you can and leave.”
“My health won’t hold out. I might make it a couple of hundred paces, at most.”
“Any stims there? Stimulators?”
“No. The truck’s first-aid kit doesn’t have any, and I used my only shot a while back.”
“Check the first-aid kit again. See if you find some bags or vials in there. Whatever there is. People carry saline and glucose around. Inject both straight into your veins, and they’ll help with the blood loss. Don’t take too much of the glucose, though—we might be immunes but we’re not immortal, and mass sugar’s a killer. Then gut the toughest beasts and get out. Understand?”
“March, you can’t imagine how much loot there is here.”
“I don’t have to. It’s not just a lot of spores, Cheat, it’s meat. A lot of meat. Meat smells, and I guarantee you the horde’s friends will come running when they pick up the scent. It’s not worth it! I mean, you do what you want with your life. I’m signing out. Good night. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and maybe a respawn coming up, so I won’t distract you. Bye.”
Ugh. March was tough to figure out. A friend sometimes, a comrade sometimes, and other times just a weird acquaintance with unclear intentions towards Cheater. And now he had just put on like he was completely indifferent towards a battlefield holding nearly five hundred freshly slain infecteds. Even a fifty percent share had failed to move him at all.
Cheater was sure that a hundred percent wouldn’t have moved him either. He simply wasn’t interested.
Cheater didn’t have March figured out at all.
* * *
Cheater had never treated anyone, so getting a needle in his veins was difficult. Some of the saline solution spilled onto the filthy truck bed floor, some just went under his skin and swelled his forearm, but he did get a portion to go where he intended.
Once again, he regretted following March’s advice. It was a total waste of time; he noticed no improvement. But a couple of sips of lifejuice perked him up right away. He rose to his feet and starting gutting carcasses. Only high-level rafflers and above got his attention. As much as he wanted to be thorough, he knew that would just take too much time.
Since his chances of escaping the city with his loot were already rather small, he’d best not whittle them down with his avarice.
The contents of each sporesac, webbing and all, got tossed into a thick plastic bag. Sometimes he even lost things in haste, dropping spores—and perhaps more valuable items—into the murky water. After all, his hands still had difficulty obeying him, and his whole body frequently shook from the chills that overtook it.
Blood loss was a cold affair, and being submerged in cold water from heel to thigh didn’t help.
Only the elite and beasts close to it in rank, like manmincers, earned a reprieve from the haste. They were the most dangerous, and thus the most profitable, of the monsters. He took care not to lose a single spore as he gutted their precious sacs.
Still, he ran out of time. Dawn was approaching, and he was still here. What would be the use of Cheater’s heavy bag of trophies if he stayed in this dungeon and its aroma pulling in infecteds from the whole area? Soon they would stream through both entrances. He considered it rare luck that no ghouls had come to visit him as it was. The rain may have his legs half-frozen, but he was grateful for it nonetheless. It muted the smells and muffled the sounds.
Besides discouraging the infecteds from going outside. They hated damp more than he did.
It kept falling, and soon the water level would be up to his crotch. Though the rumble of the thunder could hardly be heard anymore, the showers continued, and streams rushed noisily into Cheater’s lair.
In a few hours, he would drown.
He was so exhausted when he finally returned to the pickup truck that he wavered and sat, ignoring the hundreds of bodies still ungutted. Indifference grew. Even greed yielded to the cold and exhaustion. It was time to gather the last of his strength and escape.
With his loot.
He stashed the pleasantly heavy bag under the seat and stripped down. His clothes were soaked with dirty, bloody water, which was a beacon for the infected’s nose. No spare garments were to be found in the pickup, but Cheater could assemble at least some kind of robe from something if he had to.
First, he had to scram, fast and far away.
Cheater took the driver’s seat and started the car after fumbling with its unusual clutch, but the engine stalled as soon as he tried to move. It simply couldn’t cope with the blockade of bodies.
And so he started it up again and began to rock it back and forth. After a few such maneuvers, the dam gave way, and Cheater headed back towards the main tunnel. Once he reached it, he managed to at last floor the pedal, plowing through the turbulent rivers.
He had nabbed a map of the area from the grocery store, so he knew this street led to the city limits—and to the border of this dangerous cluster. As long as the rain kept up, he could use its cover to escape without being noticed by anything serious.
Yet the visibility was abysmal, and turning on the lights was a bad idea. The previous owners of the truck had equipped it with night vision, but even that failed to penetrate the downpour. He couldn’t move quickly, or he would smash into the abandoned cars littering the road.
Twelve miles an hour was pushing it. Please, System, let all the dangerous ones be hiding from the rain. Even weak runners, usually no threat to vehicles, could be a threat at these speeds.
Chapter 9
Life Six: A Quick Ride
When Cheater left the city, he didn’t realize it immediately. Nor would he have, save for the smooth pavement suddenly turning into the aftermath of military blast testing. Even at miserable speeds under ten miles per hour, the bouncing seemed to be tearing his organs apart. The suspension was durable, but not good for nausea, especially with as many wounds as Cheater had suffered.
Cheater had just crossed a cluster boundary. Since it was located on the other side of the cluster from the dangerous regional border, the cluster he was now in likely featured a low density of monsters.
That thought gave him a little strength, at least. A little will to go on. But that will soon subsided, as he began to nod off, losing focus and even acquiring a deadly apathy. All sorts of impossible nightmares and nightclub shows marched in front of his eyes across the night vision green.
He had to rest, and soon. But not yet, for he was still too close to stop. With the rain continuing its onslaught, he had to take every minute of this chance at an undetectable car ride as he could. He would get as close as possible to the stable. As long as his health didn’t disorient him, he would be heading straight towards it. This road was heading the right way. March had mentioned it and even marked it on his map.
Cheater would stay at the wheel for as long as he could force his hands and feet to obey.
* * *
His constant stare at the night vision system prevented him from detecting the change in his situation immediately. The rain was subsiding. More significantly, the dark of night was turning to blue-gray. Soon he would be able to lose the creepily distorted lime greens and rely on his own retinas.
Yet Cheater could no longer feel joy. But at least his attention was roused. Otherwise, he might have failed to barely avoid slamming straight into a truck stopped on the road. It appeared so quickly, out of the gloom, though Cheater would have sworn—albeit in mumbling tones—that he had not increased his speed.
He gripped and yanked the wheel, barely dodging catastrophe. As he moved past the truck, he managed to glimpse a motorcycle on the other side of it, with a dark humanoid figure sitting in the driver’s seat. Or did he just imagine it? Not only that, he thought the driver stared at the pickup as it passed, too.
But who dared travel the Continent on a motorcycle? A fool, perhaps. Or a maverick. Both kinds of people were unpredictable.
Something bumped into the back of his vehicle then. Cheater floored the gas, no longer concerned about potholes or pedestrians, and swerved back and forth to throw off his pursuer’s aim.
Two more bullets hit the metal, but the third hit Cheater. It pierced the seat, then struck him just south of his collarbone. The force slammed him into the steering wheel, and he screamed in agony and despair.
So much for luck! In the midst of the storm, he happened to encounter an aggressive motorcyclist.
He would lose the sack of treasure that lay under the seat. Cheater had no idea how much was there. It was a solid mass of black, tangled webbing with hundreds of small, solid objects inside.
When he coughed, blood sprayed onto the windshield. Not a good sign. This was the end of the road for him. One minute more like this, and he’d be off to respawn.
Once Cheater lost consciousness or died, the biker would have all the time he needed to search the car and claim his riches. Damn him!
Cheater coughed up blood and growled in fury, then whipped the car around a turn and zipped half a mile down the new road before driving off it. He drove through the bushes as carefully as he could, trying not to break the branches, and came to a stop once the vegetation had grown dense enough.
The door was difficult to open. He couldn’t stand, so he fell out. The trickle of falling rain revived him a bit. Pulling himself to his knees, he grabbed a couple of grenades, the rifle and its magazines, and his bag of loot, then crawled further into the thicket.
The agonizing cough returned before he had made it a dozen yards. He gasped for air, but blood filled his l
ungs. I have to live just a little bit longer. One more thing to do. With his bare hands, he began to struggle with the damp earth.
Once the hole was dug, he took the biggest risk he had yet: pulling the rings from the grenades and carefully positioning them under the bag of treasure, then weighing the whole trap down with the rifle and ammunition. He tossed the earth back atop the pile somehow, but was unable to make the covering convincing.
His thoughts were turning to mush. For some reason he tried to crawl in the other direction, but fifteen feet further, his limbs ceased obeying him. Wheezing, he buried his nose in the wet, mushroom-scented turf, and greeted the darkness with a wry, bloody smile.
If the motorcyclist managed to track down his vehicle, he just might fall for Cheater’s simple trap. Based on their descriptions, those grenades had been equipped with instant fuses. The kind used for setting up tripwires and other traps. Experienced players would suspect dirty tricks like that, but Cheater’s level would be displayed in the biker’s victory log. Assuming the man hadn’t squinted at him and read his summary back on the road.
No one expected smart tricks from a level eleven. Novices were treated with disdain and disregard.
But it would be better for Cheater if the crazy biker passed by completely, or went his own way, without searching for the pickup. As long as the System didn’t do something like respawn Cheater on the opposite side of the region, he could possibly get back and reclaim his treasure before the cluster reset.
Chapter 10
Life Seven: Better Than a Dorm
Alert: You have died and lost part of your progress. Total loss: 12 Strength progress points, 2 Agility progress points, 13 Speed progress points, 17 Endurance progress points, 9 Willpower progress points, 5 Perception progress points, 21 Stealth progress points, 6 Reaction progress points, 24 Accuracy progress points, 47 Luck progress points, 4 Talent Level points.
This is your first loss of progress. As consolation, you receive 10 distributable base stat progress points.
