Glitch Book Two

by Victor Deckard

  We were standing in the middle of the room, firing away at the monsters. Melissa and I utilized our skills, freezing or knocking away monsters. We were consuming mana fast and had to resort to using vigors constantly. Guard disapproved of our squandering the vigors because he thought we might run out of them pretty soon. We’d need vigors so bad to deal with bosses when one of them showed up.

  However disapproving, Guard said nothing. He was well aware that our constant utilizing psi-powers was the only reason why we were able to hold off the swarm of monsters now.

  When I depleted my mana again, I reached for another vigor only to find out that I had none left. Turning my head, I looked at Melissa. She felt me staring at her and met my eyes.

  “Don’t even look at me! I don’t have any more vigors too!”

  Nevertheless, the girl was smiling. She really got a kick out of playing the game. She didn’t care about our group teetering on the brink of failing, for she played the game just for the heck of it.

  I gnashed my teeth in frustration. We’d had pretty many vigors to begin with, yet we used up all the consumables before even the seventh wave began. We could barely hold out now. What would we do with one of the bosses who would spawn during the next wave?

  After a short while, we ran out of stimulators as well. Guard’s medical drones and battle robots were our only hope for victory. He created a lot of them, but they didn’t last long, with so many enemies around. Spiders spat blobs of acid at them and robots exploded one after another, sending charred pieces flying every which way.

  Then Guard was no longer creating drones.

  “Out of resources?” Stan asked.

  “Cooldown,” Guard gave a terse reply. “Gotta wait for a few minutes.”

  As if we were going to survive that long, I thought but said nothing out loud.

  Melissa was the first to get killed. It was no wonder. Her level was the lowest so she didn’t have many health points. Level-wise, I had to be the next to get whacked. Yet it didn’t turn out to be the case. It was Stan who died after Melissa had. He played a Soldier so he had an enormous amount of HP and wore heavy armor. He protected us, bearing the brunt of the enemies’ attack and in the end was killed.

  It was only Guard and myself now. We were doing our best to stay alive. The swarm of mutants tried to corner us. We were forced to run around the entire first floor, firing our weapons as we ran. But it was just a matter of time before we perished.

  My HP slowly vanished, but I couldn’t heal myself, for I got no mana, no vigors, no stimulators left. No jack-squat. It wasn’t long before monsters got me and I became a silent spectator, watching the lone survivor, Guard, trying not to get offed. Although I couldn’t see the other teammates, Melissa and Stan, I knew that they were observing Guard playing as well.

  It was quite a pleasure to watch Guard play. From where I stood, he was an extremely experienced player. He waited for mutants to get close and then blasted them to gory pieces with his powerful shotgun.

  When his weapon would run dry, he would whip around and run away, tearing shells off his tactical vest and rapidly thrusting them into the loading port.

  Monsters were relentlessly trying to grab the guy, but he dodged their claws, ducked their blows, and successfully avoided being hit by acid blobs that spiders ejected from their mouths at him.

  Watching him play, I realized Guard shouldn’t have bothered with rounding up the other players, for he would’ve had much more chances of survival if he’d played alone. Non-experienced players like Melissa or myself only inconvenienced him.

  When the cooldown was over, Guard created a medical drone and it instantly began to heal the player, hovering above his head.

  Guard actually was able to get through the wave on his own. After reviving, we picked up our armor and weapons. Stan and Guard then started to reinforce the windows once again. I figured that they just squandered their resources, for armored windows didn’t check monsters for so much as three seconds. But I kept my mouth shut for fear of sounding being critical of them.

  Melissa and I found a few vigors dropped from the killed mutants and shared them between us. Then we all rallied in the middle of the room.

  “So we’re about to face one of the bosses,” Guard said grimly. “Do you remember what you have to do, you guys?”

  Stan and me nodded silently. Melissa just smiled excitedly.

  The seventh wave began. I tensely waited for a boss to show up. It didn’t take long for him to announce itself. A tremendous roar filled the air, causing the walls to tremble.

  “Is that a boss?” Stan quizzed with a crooked smile on his face.

  “Yep,” Guard answered.

  The windows got shattered once more and mobs piled inside. Discharging my pistols on the swarm of mutants, I listened to the heavy footsteps approaching, that made the floor vibrate slightly.

  Finally, the boss showed up. It had a hard time getting through the doorway, which looked too small to accommodate his mammoth frame. Finally, it squeezed through and entered the room.

  The boss was humanoid. It stood ten or so feet high. It was giant and extremely muscular. Huge spikes protruded from its flesh here and there, tearing its skin. But the most prominent feature of his body was a large gizmo attached to each arm. It looked like some mix of a drill with a grinder.

  My HUD showed the boss’ stats.

  > Name: Fleshshredder

  > Level: 10

  > Health: 950/950

  The boss spotted us clustered together in the middle of the room and let out with an earsplitting, thunderous roar. Stan let loose with his assault rifle, the weapon clattering, a long burst stitching a line of gory holes across the boss’ broad chest. The fleshshredder didn’t seem to sustain any damage at all, its HP completely intact.

  The boss suddenly roared again and forcefully drove one of its grinder-drills into the floor. The gizmo vibrated and the ground shook violently. Thrown off the balance, Melissa dropped flat. All the others managed not to topple over. After a few seconds, the boss withdrew its drill from the floor and the earthquake instantly ceased. Giggling, the girl rose to her feet.

  After nodding Melissa and me, Guard and Stan started to aggro the boss, letting it have it with both barrels.

  “Rest assured, it can’t run,” Guard said. “It can move only at pretty slow pace.”

  Emitting another roar, the fleshshredder burst into a race in the guys’ direction.

  “It can’t run, huh?” Stan smirked.

  Guard sweated. I thought that the mob count not only scaled with the number of players in the group but monsters also got new abilities. For instance, the more players were on the team, the higher got the speed at which the fleshshredder moved. If the gamer played alone, the boss couldn’t run but only walked at a leisurely pace.

  The monster dashed after the two guys, brandishing its grinders overhead. The players retreated hastily in another room with the boss on their heels, all of them disappearing from sight. Melissa and I hurried after them.

  The fleshshredder would come to a stop and dug its drills into the floor from time to time. Guard and Stan would take advantage of it and fired away at the boss. However, I noticed that bullets dealt little damage to the monster and its wounds almost instantly healed over as its HP fully replenished.

  Melissa and I were trying to do our best to keep pace with the guys, who were racing around almost ceaselessly, and keep the swarm of weaker mutants at bay.

  After the fleshshredder pulled its drills from the floor for the hundredth time, it turned around and dashed toward Melissa and me instead of the guys. The reason for that was that Melissa had aggravated it after wounding the monster with her pistol a few times.

  On seeing the enormous monster pounding directly toward us, I almost freaked out. But the next moment I managed to gather my wits and employed the Stasis.

  The silvery power filed circled the monster in. But to my amazement, th
e boss didn’t get frozen up but slightly slowed down. After a few seconds, the fleshshredder exited the power dome and his movement speed recovered.

  The monster charged at Melissa, clearing the three or so yards between them in one huge leap and sticking one drill into her body. The girl got slain in half a second, getting torn to pieces, ragged gory flesh and blood splashed everywhere. After dealing with the girl, the boss turned toward me.

  Freaking out, I took off. The footsteps sounded behind me, making the walls quiver. I looked back over my shoulder from time to time. The monster was gaining on me, narrowing the distance between us real fast. Guard and Stan opened fire on the fleshshredder to attract its attention. Still, the boss seemed to be eager to deal with me first.

  Suddenly I felt something penetrate me. One drill went through my body and burst from my chest, blood oozing around the thick tip of the grinder. The sharp pain flashed through me. In a moment I was dead. The spectator mode got activated.

  Guard and Stan were being chased by the boss. The fleshshredder drove its drills into the floor every now and then as the two players fired shots at the monster. Yet they inflicted little to no damage on the boss. The enormous creature regenerated its health exceptionally fast. There had to be a vulnerable spot somewhere on its body like blisters appearing on the swelled-out bodies of boomers. But the players failed to find it thus far. And so did I.

  Stan died next. Guard was alone. Again. He ran around the building with the fleshshredder in constant tow. The enormous monster pounded after the player, stomping on the dead bodies of the mutants, that didn’t disappear yet, mashing and grinding them into the pulpy gory mass, blood, flesh, bones, brains, and cranial fluid all blending together to form a revolting, nauseating mush covering the floor.

  The player successfully avoided all the monster’s blows so far. Nevertheless, I was certain that it was just a matter of time before the boss got him. Just one precise hit could easily snuff Guard.

  The player discharged his weapon from time to time, the shotgun booming, the buckshot blasting huge hunks out of the monster’s body, spraying the walls with blood-covered flesh and yellowish pus. Yet the boss seemed to take little damage. Its wounds healed over extremely fast as its HP regenerated constantly.

  There had to be a vulnerable spot somewhere on its body. But where exactly? Where had Guard to fire to deal critical damage to the fleshshredder?

  One blast from the Guard’s shotgun caught the monster in the face, blowing half of it apart, but it didn’t seem to bother the monster a bit. Its head got reconstructed in no time. So firing the fleshshredder in the face did little damage to the monster as well.

  I remembered that boomers had blisters, their vulnerable spots, appearing on their bodies only once in a while. Perhaps the same held true for the fleshshredder. Maybe one just had to wait for a vulnerable spot to pop up?

  Yet I didn’t notice its body undergo any changes thus far. The boss didn’t seem to have any vulnerable spots at all. However, there had to be a way to take that ugly brawny sonofabitch down, for sure.

  As I watched Guard ducking the monster’s blows, I was racking my brains to puzzle out the solution to the riddle. I carefully observed Guard trying to gun the monster down as it was doing its best to smash the spry player with its drills.

  Then it struck me. I finally had it figured out. I finally found a way to bring the fleshshredder down.

  The problem was that I had no way of tipping off Guard about the solution. I had no means of communication with him. All I could do was watch him play and hope that he would ultimately figure out a way to kill the monster by himself.

  That never happened. Guard just kept running away from the boss and occasionally glancing back to discharge his shotgun at the monster. It stood to reason. The player had no time for lingering around and carefully watching the boss to puzzle the problem out. If he’d stayed immobile for a mere second, the fleshshredder would’ve instantly taken advantage of it and crushed the player. Which was why Guard was constantly on the move. He just couldn’t pay attention to details, the way I had at the moment. So he failed to find out the fleshshredder’s vulnerability.

  In the end, the boss got him. The monster swept one grinder, catching the player in the chest. The player was hurled across the room and smacked against the far wall. Before Guard recovered, the monster leaped up to him and swung another drill, smearing the player across the wall.

  Before everything went dark before my eyes, I caught a glimpse of a message popping up in my HUD.

  > All your group members were slain! You didn’t make it through the night!

  THE END OF THE BOOK TWO

  TO BE CONTINUED…

  Other books by Victor Deckard

  The Glitch Series (LitRPG)

  Glitch Book One

  Stand-alone (Urban Fantasy)

  Outbreak

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  Hey guys! Thank you so much for reading! If you’ve enjoyed reading this book, feel free to leave a review so as to let me know if you’d like to see more books in this series. This novella is just the second book in a planned post-apocalyptic survival LitRPG series. If you want to be kept in the loop about the next book releases, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Also, if you’ve found a typo or mistake in this novella and want to let me know about it so I can correct it to make the novella better, send me your corrections on my email. The next book in this series is slated to come out in a two or so months. Don’t miss it!

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