A thin scream filled the room. I looked around to see Melissa being surrounded by a few monsters, which were getting inside through broken windows. Judging from melted edges of the metal plates, they’d been eaten through by acid of boomers.
Melissa didn’t utilize her psi-powers, perhaps having decided to save on vigors until later waves. I wanted to dash across the room to come to her aid, but Stan beat me to it.
“Y’all better kill boomers first,” Guard shouted, having noticed broken windows at the far end of the room, which was Melissa’s responsibility. I thought that perhaps Guard should’ve warned us about exploding boomers having strong acid for blood in the first place.
Finally, it was a break. Melissa and I went outside to gather up the loot.
“It was a close call, wasn’t it?” I said.
Melissa was smiling lightly as she replied with a joyful gleam in her eyes, “More fun ahead.”
We returned to the building. After taking rifle ammo and grenades from us, Stan went upstairs. Melissa took up the position by the stairs. Guard created a few flying battle drones and placed several automatic turrets on the walls.
The fourth wave began. We were doing our best to keep monsters at bay, yet they soon crashed through the windows and entrance door into the building. We were unleashing a devastating barrage on them, slaying monsters in packs. One killed mutant was instantly replaced by another.
Just in a few minutes, the entire first floor was swarmed with monsters. They were all over the room, on the floor, walls, and ceiling. Spiders spat acid globs on us. Sometimes I successfully dodged them and sometimes I did not. Sharp pain penetrated my body from time to time when an acid ball smacked against me and ate through my armor and at my flesh.
I set about employing my psi-powers, knocking away the pushiest mobs with the Surge, lifting them off the ground by the Blow, and freezing them up with the Stasis. I also activated the Shield from time to time, yet it didn’t last long, what with so many foes around.
I tried to patch myself up with the Biokinesis but to no avail. Once I started to use the psi-power, one of the nearby monsters deal some damage to me, terminating it.
I caught a glimpse of Melissa glaring at me every now and then. Obviously, she disapproved of my using psi-powers so often. Perhaps, she reckoned I might use up all of my vigors in no time and then start begging for hers. And she didn’t seem to be willing to share her vigors with me.
Speaking of Melissa, I noticed that she didn’t utilize her skills at all. Which was understandable. The girl was standing halfway up the stairs so that she could render Stan assistance if needed. The whole first floor was teeming with monsters but only few of them made an attempt to ascend the stairs. So it was Guard and me who had to deal with the swarm of monsters.
With my constant eliminating mobs, my experience bar was steadily filling. Mana, on the contrary, dissipated pretty quickly. When I would have little mana left, I would resort to one of my vigors. I was bound to run out of vigors very soon. It was inevitable. True to form, I ultimately had no vigors left. It was a shame. Sure, I had few vigors to begin with, but I hadn’t expected to use up all of them before we reached later waves.
“Hey, watch out!” Melissa suddenly shouted to me. “Look around, you dummy!”
I’d already noticed the greenish illumination coming from behind myself. It could mean only one thing. I jumped to the side and glanced back. A boomer was on my heels. And the mutant had already turned into a huge bright spot, which meant it was about to explode. I activated the Shield just before the boomer blew out, spraying strong acid all over the power dome. The Shield popped.
A few drops of acid hit me. It ate through my biker armor and reached my skin. It hurt a lot. The pain was so intense I just couldn’t bear it. I started racing around and screaming, aggravating the swarm of monsters. Running past the stairs, I heard Melissa shout at me, “Whatcha doing, moron?”
Of all of the monsters on my trail a few spotted the girl and raced up the stairs after her, forcing her to ascend the rest of the steps to the second floor. Guard was able to keep mobs at bay. Still, when I raced past him, a dozen mobs separated from the swarm following me and charged at the player from the rear.
I was well aware that my haphazard running around endangered my teammates’ lives, but I just couldn’t help it. Acid kept burning my flesh, making me suffer extreme pain.
Suddenly, I tripped over a carcass of a dead mutant and got flattened against the floor. Several mutants pounced on me, impaling me on their long claws. I tried to use the Surge to knock the monsters away from me, but I didn’t have enough mana left.
Luckily for me, the torture didn’t last long. The mobs finished me off in a few seconds. Contrary to my expectation, when the darkness before my eyes dissipated, I found out that I was still in the building.
That said, something was strange. I was looking over Guard’s right shoulder. I myself couldn’t move but when Guard raced across the room, I trailed him without my actual doing so.
Then I got it. It was a spectator mode, which allowed me to observe the game from the other players’ angles. I switched to another player, Stan. He was upstairs, firing the Predator away at a bunch of small flying monsters. Melissa was assisting him.
Stan’s assault rifle ran dry. He turned around and ran for cover, with me being tagged along with him. I couldn’t either fly around or interact with the game world in any way. But I could look around.
As Stan was changing mags, I glanced back and saw a dozen winged monsters chasing the player. I wanted to warn him about them, but it turned out to be beyond my control as well. All I could do was just silently observe the other players on the team fight the mobs.
Stan finally slammed the fresh mag home, whipped around, and unleashed a devastating barrage on the winged mutants chasing him, snuffing them all.
I switched back to Guard. Watching him play, I figured he seemed to be the most experienced player on the team. Nevertheless, he surely needed assistance. He couldn’t deal with all the mobs swarming the first floor on his own. Monsters were intent on circling him in so the player had to be constantly on the move in order to thwart their plans. He was running around the first floor, discharging his shotgun at the monsters and slaying them one after another. Had the corpses not vanished after a while the floor would’ve abundantly littered by corpses by this point.
The massacre lasted a few minutes more. Then I suddenly revived behind Guard. Aside from underpants, I was stark naked. Guard turned around and stated, “You back? Good. Stick to me while I take the remaining mobs out.”
There were much fewer monsters around since the wave had ended and they were no longer spawning. Guard had actually been able to hold out until the end of the wave all by himself. He was indeed the best player on the team.
Eventually, the remaining mutants were dealt with. I found the body of my previous character, stripped it of the biker outfit, and put it on. After picking up my pistols, I glanced at the experience bar. I’d lost about half experience points I had.
Stan and Melissa descended the stairs and went over to us.
“How you managed?” Stan quizzed.
“Just fine,” Guard shrugged. “Max got killed, but I held out.”
Melissa glared at me, “So you died? Loser! We shouldn’t have taken you in!”
“Here we go again,” Guard sighed. “Quit picking on him already. I don’t ask you to fall in love with him or something. Could you just put up with him, at least through the duration of the night?”
“Fall in love with him?” Melissa shrieked. “Are you nuts? How could I possibly fall for him? Did you see what he was doing? He was running around and screaming like a crazy, aggravating all the mobs! We could’ve failed because of him!”
Stan regarded me with a puzzled expression on his face.
“You was running around and screaming like a crazy, huh?” He asked. “What’s the matter with you?”
I ignored the girl. By way of explanation, I said, “A boomer exploded near me. Acid burned me like hell.”
All of them just stared at me, puzzled.
“It’s just a game, bro,” Stan finally stated. “I know this is a roleplaying game so one can change their behavior to assume a particular role, but there’s no need to overdo it.”
My teammate’s reaction bothered me a great deal. I was about to ask a question to Stan when Melissa called out to me, “Say, are you going to stay there all night? How about you go and assist me?”
I looked around and saw the girl gathering up the loot. After noticing it, Stan and Guard hurried to repair broken windows. Realizing the next wave would start very soon, I decided to hold off asking the question until later and joined Melissa in picking up the loot.
After some time passed, we clustered together on the first floor once more and dealt ammo and stimulators out.
“All right,” Guard looked at me. “Max, what about your vigors?”
“Ran out of them.”
The player shifted his gaze toward Melissa.
“Give him some, will ya?”
Sure enough, she resented having to give some of her vigors to me. She hissed, “What? I have to give him my vigors because he can’t go easy on mana, huh? No way!”
“We’re the team, aren’t we?” Guard said tiredly. “So we have to help each other. If we don’t, we won’t survive the night.”
“And more to the point,” Stan cut in, grinning. “It was us who gave you the vigors. Don’t you remember that, Melissa?”
The girl grudgingly agreed to give me some of her vigors, “Make sure not to use up all of them at once. Because I ain’t gonna give you any more!”
“Don’t worry,” Stan winked at me. “She will if she has to.”
Melissa stared daggers at him for a couple of moments before whirling around and stalked across the room to the stairs.
“Take care, guys,” Stan said to as and hurried after the girl upstairs.
The fifth wave started. It wasn’t long before all the windows were being pounded at. Then there were a few explosions followed by flashes of greenish light. The metal plates on two windows instantly melted away and mobs started to climb into the building.
Guard and myself cut loose as Stan and Melissa on the second floor did the same. Mutants tried to get through windows all at once. Due to that, they got jammed in the broken windows from time to time, striving against each other to be next to enter.
The swarm of mutants made us retreat from the windows. Robots and turrets fired endlessly but accomplished little. Eventually, I started using my psi-powers, consuming mana and vigors.
After a spell, Stan and Melissa dashed downstairs.
“What’s the matter?” Guard asked glancing at them.
“There’re too many of them up there,” Stan replied unleashing a long burst on the mobs rushing downstairs, monsters bloodily cartwheeling down the steps.
We all clustered together back-to-back in the middle of the room and opened up on the swarm of mutants all around us. We managed to hold the monsters for a few minutes. Melissa and I activated the Shield alternately as Guard’s medical robots healed us.
Then a few boomers got inside the house. One of them started for us. It was emitting bright illumination, teetering on the edge of exploding. We scattered as the mob burst. Acrid fluid spattered in all directions. We were fortunate enough to avoid being hit by it.
More and more mutants made it inside the house. We tried to huddle up together, but they didn’t allow us to.
Another boomer exploded. Melissa stood nearby. She managed to turn on the Shield in time. Still, the power dome popped almost instantly when acid splattered all over it. Melissa got splashed as well. Burning fluid eat numerous holes in her light armor almost instantly.
Guard directed two medical drones toward the Melissa. They started to tend to her numerous acid burns as the girl stayed still, constantly discharging her pistol on the nearby mobs. Stinging acid ate at her flesh, yet the girl didn’t so much as squeak. Instead, she did something altogether different. She laughed! I could barely believe it. I knew how it felt to be burnt by acid. Nevertheless, the girl was laughing. Unfreakingbelievable.
She waved to Guard to attract his attention and when he caught her eye, she stated joyfully, “Thanks for the healing drones! But for them, I might’ve been as good as dead by now!”
“No problem,” Guard said in reply and commenced blasting his shotgun on the approaching boomer, buckshot peppering its bulky pus-oozing frame.
After replenishing Melissa’s HP, the two medical drones evaluated the situation and came flying toward Stan, who was sporting a few fresh wounds covering his body.
As for Melissa, she wasn’t laughing any longer, but there was a smile on her lips and her eyes were gleaming happily as she gunned down one monster after another. She sure relished every minute of the game.
That she took great pleasure in playing the game wasn’t what had surprised me. No, it was something altogether different that amazed me. Stan had recently told me that he’d been burned alive inside his car. Oddly enough, he related this story absolutely calmly.
Then, all three of them had suspiciously stared at me when I told them that after the boomer exploded, a few drops of acid splashed me and how much it hurt. And now this, Melissa got splashed by acid, yet she didn’t even cry in pain. On the contrary, he was laughing as is nothing happened.
I’d wanted to ask a question to the guys some time before. I wanted to ask them if they could feel pain in the game when wounded. But as things turned out, I didn’t have to pose the question because now I knew the answer.
I remembered thinking that no player would’ve played the game if they’d had to suffer extreme pain. Burning alive or boiling in acid hurt like hell, so it goes without saying that nobody would’ve ever wanted to be subjected to such tortures. Nobody.
So yeah, I knew the answer to my question now. No, all the players in the game didn’t feel any pain. For some weird, really weird, reason I seemed to be the only player in the game who felt pain when wounded.
I recollected something else. Unlike all the other players, I couldn’t not only quit the game but also I didn’t get disconnected if died during a night. Also, I felt pain while all the other players didn’t. I remembered reflecting on the game and speculating that it might have a lot of bugs. But now another thought struck me. What if I myself was some kind of a glitch?
The thought sent chills down my spine. Guessed I had to reach out to the developers somehow. And the sooner I found a way to do it, the better.
I absorbed myself into reflecting so deeply that it wasn’t until a gigantic spider sneaked up on me and spat a blob of acid that I noticed it. My shoulder burned as the blob smacked against it. Screaming involuntarily, I whirled around and snuffed the ugly creature.
More boomers got inside. Monsters managed to corner Melissa and then two boomers exploded near her. This time the girl didn’t make it.
There were only three of us left alive now. We fought our way to each other and opened fire in the opposite directions. Shortly afterward, I ran out of vigors again. Guard didn’t create robots as well. Either he depleted all his resources or the cooldown wasn’t over yet.
Also, we were out of stimulators. We were doing our best to hold off the swarm of monsters, but I was certain we’d fail. I had almost no HP left and the guys probably didn’t have much left as well.
Then I realized mobs were no longer spawning, which meant the wave was finally over. As if in confirmation of my thoughts, Melissa revived behind us. She waited for us to finish off the remaining mutants and then headed for her dead previous character to pick up her stuff.
So we were fortunate enough to get through the fifth wave. But as far as I was concerned,
we had no grounds for optimism. We had barely made it alive through the fifth wave. Had it lasted a trifle longer we would’ve been overwhelmed by mobs, that’s for sure.
And it’d been only the fifth wave. The next ones would surely be way worse. Doubts rose in me. I was certain that the next wave would turn out to be the last for us. I didn’t entertain any delusions about our team’s ability to withstand another wave.
I voiced my thoughts.
“Snap out of it, bud,” Stan said cheerfully. “We’ll make it.”
“Max’s right,” Guard objected. “The last wave was a dire struggle. I get it now. When I played alone, I sailed through the first six waves. But we’re struggling now. The reason for this is that the mob count and mobs’ strength scale with the number of players on the group.”
“So what do we do then?” Stan wanted to know and instantly added. “Hey, you’ve just leveled up, haven’t you?”
I looked at the Guard’s level. Stan was right. Our leader had leveled up to 9.
“I suggest you upgrade the skill for reinforcing windows and doors,” Stan opined.
“Nah, armor wouldn’t get much tougher. I’m better off upgrading my drones.”
Guard lifted his left arm and looked at the crystal embedded in his flesh. While he assigned the skill points, Melissa and me gathered up the loot, and Stan fortified the windows. Then we bunched up together, converging into a group in the middle of the room once more.
“So what’s the plan?” Stan inquired.
“Guess there’s no use in splitting into two groups,” Guard replied. “Let’s all stick together on the first floor. That way we might ratchet up our chances of survival a few notches.”
“Okay.”
The sixth wave began. After a half a minute or so, a few boomers approached the building and exploded. The acid ate away at the armored windows almost instantly. Monsters started to get inside, leaping up, catching the jagged edges of the broken windows, and pulling their bodies up and through. There were so many frantic mutants all the openings were choked with them, mutants fighting among themselves frenziedly, each one trying to be next through the windows and doors.
Glitch Book Two Page 11
