by Arthur Stone
Cheater didn’t even consider picking up the man’s semi-auto. One bot showing up meant a second could be nearby. Every moment was precious, and risking time to collect trophies might mean losing everything. He was thrilled the cab door was wide open—pulling the handle would have wasted a priceless half-second.
He tested the gas pedal gingerly, unsure of how the vehicle handled. It even took him a moment to figure out the headlights. As he was fiddling with the controls, the truck rocked from a mighty blow. In the side mirror, he saw a turret from one of the armored vehicles falling through the air. Judging by its trajectory, that was what had just struck his vehicle
At last figuring out the high beams, Cheater pushed the gas pedal harder. He had to get out, and fast. No player could have a chance in a fight where multi-ton objects were being thrown around.
With the headlights on, he saw the abandoned mortars. The bots had left them since they were useless in a battle like this. Cheater had a temptation to run over them, but he thought better of it. His banal thirst for revenge was not worth the risk of tire damage.
The elite would destroy them himself without needing a player’s help. In fact, the longer it spent dealing with the bots, the more time would pass before it thought about escaped prisoners.
But less than a minute later, Cheater deeply regretted his decision. He had no idea what had gotten into the machine gunners’ heads that made them want to start shooting the truck. Tracers flashed to the left and right of him, and the truck took a hit. He could smell burning insulation. Cheater cursed and shut off the headlights after checking to be sure that he could safely drive forward a hundred yards without the help of light.
Three seconds later, he turned the lights back on. The machine gun began shooting at him immediately, but it had fallen silent when his lights were off. Though they had hit the truck several times, it was still running, and the driver was uninjured.
This cycle repeated three whole more times before the bots finally stopped.
The player called up his map and got his bearings, then headed for the nearest road that was going in the right direction. With any luck, it would take him very close to his destination, about a half-mile away. As long as the bots hadn’t damaged or confiscated his boat, he would take it to the opposite end of the waterway, where he would try to reach level 18.
Staying in the region was a risky move, of course. In the place where he had already been killed by other players, captured by bots, and tracked by an elite. He simply didn’t have any other options. Looking for a new place would lose time, and time was precisely what he did not have.
Wait, what are those flashes in my mirror?
Cheater was finally on the road now. He stopped, jumped out, and cursed his luck. The truck was in flames in two places at the same time, and a thick stream of fluid was gushing from the punctured fuel tank. Soon a stream of fuel was rushing over the road. A spark flew into it without winking out before it touched. The whole pool erupted into flame, crawling under the belly of the vehicle and licking at the tires.
He leaped into the cab to grab his bow and his arrows. No attempt to extinguish the flames was forthcoming. After all, there was neither water nor a fire extinguisher handy. If good fire extinguishers were even a thing in this world.
He had to move on foot now, alternating between running and brisk walking, and never stopping. His Stamina was at a decent level, and as long as it didn’t hit 0, he might make it to the boat before dawn.
As long as he beat the elite there.
Chapter 29
Life Seven: March’s Quest
The distant glimmer of lightning clued Cheater into the approaching storm early in his journey, just as the sky in the east began the first hint of going from black to gray. It dispensed with all pretense and hit Cheater with hail immediately. Thankfully the chunks of ice were small, but they were still unpleasant. The pavement and the ground became covered with a thin layer of hail that was quickly washed away with the subsequent rush of rain.
“Rush” was underexaggerating. Floods covered the ground. He ran across damp earth, then mud, then ankle-deep water, and yet the level kept rising. This despite the fact that the rain drained off the road. The shoulders were forming new rivers. Without being able to see the pavement beneath his feet, Cheater stumbled over a badly damaged human bone and tripped so badly that he had to limp to go on. Acute pain flared up in his knee.
It felt like a return to tradition. Cheater had experienced intense problems with his knee during his first few lives.
Half an hour later, a lost ghoul emerged from the veil of rain. Their species hated water, and this one looked so miserable it didn’t even realize that it had stepped right in the way of its preferred meal. But Cheater had his pistol out and finished it off with a shot into its gaping mouth. The victory log said it was a novice raffler, but the man dared not stop to search the corpse.
He pressed on. Ever on. As quickly as he could. The chill and damp consumed his Stamina much faster than he had counted on. Still, he had to keep up his pace. It was said that dire elites were stubborn. They could pursue prey for hours, even days, before giving up. So if the elite that had attacked the bots was one of those, every moment mattered.
At last the rain began to subside, only to turn into hail. This rain was quite abnormal, but the only unsurprising thing about the Continent was its continual surprises. What else could you expect from a world where every region was susceptible to being reset at any moment? Fresh clusters brought in their temperatures, humidity, and wind patterns at the time of reset, which caused chaos in the Continent’s weather system.
An alert rang out. Cheater opened the menu to see his chat icon flashing.
March must have been having trouble sleeping, so he had decided to write.
“Good morning, Cheat. Drop your old friend a few words when you wake up.”
“I’m not asleep.”
“Still pumping? Good. You still haven’t reached level 18, and there’s not much time left. I’m worried. It seems like you might not have enough time to reach legal age.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Working on it? You’re dedicated, I’ll give you that. How do you like leveling at night? You do know that normal players spend their nights screwing or sleeping, right? You should get some rest. I’m really hoping you make it, and if you lose a life, you’re unlikely to make it in time. Without much time left, a respawn might mean losing everything.”
“I’m not leveling. Just walking. Long story, but I’ve encountered a bit of an adventure here. A nasty adventure.”
“Of course you did. You have a rare talent for finding nasty adventures. Remember your time limit. If you fail to meet it, you’ll have no choice but to content yourself with waving at your girl from two regions away.”
“I remember. I’ll make it in time.”
“Really? I like your confidence. I hope there’s substance to it. Alright, my boy, get up to speed. I don’t want to be proven wrong about you. I don’t know where you’re going or why, but I’ll drink to your safe arrival.”
“Thanks, March. Drink a double shot, because there are more adventures on the road ahead.”
“No need to say anything more. Go on, then, I’ll see you at level 18. I won’t mention level 20, because even you don’t have time for that.”
The hail switched back to rain. By now, the road was so flooded that he could no longer see where the road ended and the shoulder began. Cheater kept wandering off the road and only noticing when the pavement under his feet became soft earth.
Things only got worse from there. The road started running downhill, so the flow of the water accelerated. Not only that, the hard pavement turned into gravel. The only thing keeping him on the road was glimpses of flooded bushes to either side. At last the rising sun began to poke through the darkness. Visibility improved. Once again, though, the rain turned to hail.
But this was the kind of hail that killed wildlife. It hurt. An
d it came down in such quantities that it blocked the streams of water in places, forming huge, floating masses of wet ice that washed across the road. Now and then he fell, and the going got tougher. His Stamina and Pleasure were both plummeting, penalizing his stats, but there was nothing he could do about that. Keep going, Cheater. He focused on one step at a time, finding some silver lining in the clouds: infecteds were much less likely to track him.
Who’s that up ahead? Dammit! Speak of the devil. The creature’s gait was so specific that no one could mistake it for a human. And it was moving the same direction Cheater was: downward. Quickly it ran, paying little heed to the ice on the road.
Why was it running away from him? Had it failed to notice him? In this weather, perhaps. The hailstones crunched underfoot and banged his head, thunder threatened him from all sides, and streams of water roared from beside the road, and in places across it. A keen sense of hearing was hardly a help in this storm. Even a good sense of smell would be of little use. Still, it was strange to see. Never before had an infected fled from before Cheater so quickly.
Wait, no, I have seen that before.
Please no!
He turned instinctively and exhaustedly, and was unsurprised to see standing there the reason the younger infected was fleeing. Today had been so unlucky, and it wasn’t about to let him get away so easily.
At the very limit of his vision, he saw it through the streams of ice pouring from the sky. The elite. The same one that had almost gotten him before. And, he was sure, the one who had visited the bots. Creatures so large were too rare a find in remote areas far from the central regions of the Continent and from regional borders. No one could run into multiple such beasts within a couple of days. Colossal, angular, spiny, with not a hint of the animal or human base that had been its substrate. Even a volley from an autocannon at close range would hardly kill the beast.
It stood on the road. Undoubtedly rejoicing. And why not? Despite all the rain and hail, it had successfully tracked its victim. An elite’s sense of smell was impossibly good.
If March’s map was correct, it was just under a mile to the river. Reaching it would take Cheater a few minutes, at best.
But the elite would catch him in seconds.
That was it. Fin. Cheater bid farewell to all his hopes and dreams, for he would never reach level 18 in time. First, he would be shuttled off to respawn, then need to reclaim his bow from his cache, get out of the city, and make his way to the meeting point, which might be devastatingly far away. Most importantly, he would need to find some way to make up the missing experience on the way.
And time waits for no man.
He took a step to the left, onto a relatively flat area where the water did not reach up to his knees. With his bow in his left hand, he nocked his first arrow, let the air out of his lungs, drew a couple of deep breaths, tensed as he pulled the bowstring, and fired.
The arrow him right where he had intended: the beast’s right eye. It was a glorious shot given the powerful wind and weather, his level of fatigue, and the considerable distance between the combatants.
But the arrow hit the beast’s pupil, bounced off, and spun through the arrow, a porridge of water and ice spraying off its tail. As if on cue, the elite charged. It would be upon Cheater in seconds. He had enough time for one shot. Two would be lucky. Shooting at an impenetrable goal was a pointless exercise, but dropping to his knees as death approached was worse.
So he tried. He released the second arrow and placed a third on his string, drawing the bow and activating Smile of Fortune at the same time.
Twang. The elite was about fifty feet away.
But Cheater missed. In fact, he missed colossally. The air flew over the elite’s head.
All because arrows have travel time. Between the time he released the bowstring and the time the arrow reached its goal, something happened that Cheater could not have foreseen.
The monster fell.
It collapsed, scrambling, as it encountered one of the icy blocks on the road. The ice had buckled under the beast’s weight, breaking the point of contact between its foot and the surface of the road. To put it bluntly, the elite had slipped on a bed of melting hailstones. It crashed to the ground.
But it didn’t stop. Elites moved too fast for that. It wasn’t easy for a mass weighing several tons to cease its motion in a matter of feet. So the descent to the river turned into a great slide lubricated by ice and water. It proved too slippery for the elite to navigate, and a great filthy wave flowed in front of its massive head. That kept the creature from seeing, but it had the ingenious idea to push its paws to the side and press its spikes into the ground. The brakes worked, and soon it would slow to a halt.
Giving Cheater no time to escape. The man could go neither left nor right in time, and the incoming carcass would crush him.
So he jumped. It was the only option: try to jump up and land on the beast’s head. But he didn’t land right, for the beast turned its head at the most inopportune moment. One of its spikes got Cheater’s leg, and the man was already losing his balance anyway. Also, the beast tossed him up higher in the air than he had expected. During a short, uncontrolled flight over the fiend’s head, Cheater turned around and crashed onto the beast’s back, landing directly on a sharp, thick spine. Its whole back was covered in spines, so there was no avoiding them.
Screaming in agony and desperation, Cheater dropped his bow. The elite twitched, realizing somehow that its tasty prey was no longer in front of it but was already on a platter and served up, ready to be consumed.
One of these twitches caused Cheater such pain that some unknown defense mechanism kicked in, pushing all of his suffering out of his mind. He realized that perhaps Smile of Fortune had not failed him. Perhaps it had provided him this severe chain of events in order to give him his only possible chance at winning this hopeless fight.
His hand slid to his belt, and the pulled the pistol out of the holster. As he hurried to cock the weapon, he nearly dropped it, saving it from falling into the road-river by catching it with his fingertips. He ignored the new surge of absurd pain, bent over like a worm wriggling on the fish hook that had just pierced it, and tried to get a view of his target. He couldn’t see the sights, for his eyes had clouded over. Plus, the target was writhing back and forth, besides twitching its head.
Wait. Why even aim down the sights at all? My Accuracy works without that. He held a weapon in his hand, and the only vulnerable spot on the elite, the black opening peeking out from under the protective hood over the sporesac, was in front of him.
He was looking right at it.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Die, you monster! The beast shook more violently. Perhaps it had discerned the plans of this cunning little human. It tried to roll its head to the side, but the next ice flow hindered it. Cheater looked into the beast’s eyes, into its mouth, and he had to press the trigger blindly now, rather than hope for a better chance.
He wouldn’t survive the wait for a better chance.
One more shot, but he only heard a click. He couldn’t believe it. Pulling back the hammer with his thumb, he pressed the trigger again. Click. That was it.
The end. Cheater had fired every one of his bullets.
He shook his head, trying to clean it of ice and dirt. The pain came back in full force then. As the world began to darken, Cheater found himself lost amidst space and time. By some miracle he postponed his departure, hovering on the very edge, the precipice beyond which consciousness shut down completely.
He groaned and opened his eyes, readying himself for an inevitable death. Affixed to the back of an elite. The armored spike had punched through his liver and out his back. It was a picture worthy of illustrated torture manuals from the Middle Ages.
Why did his wound no longer hurt, then? Because the movement had stopped. No jerking, no swaying. They had stopped sliding downhill? Had the beast stopped itself? It seemed so. Then why did it still lie there, its head buried in a deep pothole fi
lled with ice and water? Every Continental rule he knew should have had the creature yearning to yank its new prize from its back as quickly as possible before tearing it to shreds.
Cheater’s health was so bad that he was refusing to admit the obvious. He didn’t even notice the victory message at first. Only when he felt irritation at the red burning into his nerves did it dawn on him.
After all, the messages were much too red. And red reminded him of blood. Which was slipping away in great quantities.
Along with his life.
Alert: Personal victory: extremely dangerous infected destroyed. Level 103. Chance of valuable loot: 100%. Congratulations. That was an excellent battle. You defeated an incomparably stronger opponent, more than eighty levels higher than you. A rare victory! You have received 500 distributable base stat progress points. You have received 250 distributable bonus stat progress points. You have received 20 distributable points for your meters. Your personal inventory cell has grown by 2 items, with a new weight limit of 70 grams. Your personal cache limit has increased by 410 grams. Your special personal cache cell limit has increased by 180 grams.
You have unlocked a new hidden stat: Monster Hunter. Bonuses for Monster Hunter level 1: High-level monsters have a 10% lower chance of detecting you. To reach level 2 of the Monster Hunter stat, destroy, without any assistance, 3 monsters 50 or more levels higher than you, or destroy, as part of a party, 9 monsters 75 or more levels higher than you. Party victories only count towards this stat when you make an indisputable, significant contribution to the party’s victory.
+159 progress points to Strength. +647 progress points to Agility. +126 progress points to Speed. +876 progress points to Endurance. +1195 progress points to Willpower. +342 progress points to Reaction. +1506 progress points to Accuracy. +1135 progress points to Luck. +1689 Humanity points.
