Glitch Book Four
by Victor Deckard
Table of contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Acknowledgments
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GAMELIT SOCIETY
Chapter one
“We’ve just gotten a reply from the developers. They said that they checked you out scrupulously but failed to find any issues. They said there aren’t any errors that prevent you from quitting the game. The only reason that you cannot leave the game is your addiction to virtual reality games. We’ve already met players like you who play for twenty-four hours without stopping. Truth be told, there’re a couple of such players even in our clan.
So listen, all you need to do is muster as much willpower as possible, bring up the Main Menu, and press the Quit button. Your so-called problem will be solved. You shouldn’t have bothered the developers over such trifles. Neither they nor we can push the button for you. So yeah.”
I scanned the text, feeling very depressed. After finishing reading it, I just stood there for a few moments, looking absently at the display.
What the heck did it mean? The developers stated there weren’t any issues. How could that be possible? The developers couldn’t help but be aware of me being trapped in the game, for sure. So why were they trying to conceal it by telling Desert Wanderers that there was no such issue?
Another thought struck me. What if–– What if it was the developers themselves who had a finger in the pie? What if the developers were somehow involved in my having been transferred from 2018 to further into the future and inserted in the game for some weird reason?
On the other hand, they might have nothing to do with that. They probably just didn’t want the word to spread. If the story about a player trapped in the game leaked, it would surely stain the developer’s reputation and negatively impact the income from the game, what with there being a video game addiction social problem in the real world, which was considered to be very grave.
So perhaps the developers had nothing to do with my being stuck in the game. The developers might already be working to fix the glitch that was preventing me from exiting the game, who knows!
It meant that someone else had trapped me in the virtual reality. But who? And for what reason? I had no idea.
What I knew for sure was that Desert Wanderers had totally bought the developers’ bullshit. They believed me to be just a game addict who couldn’t muster up enough willpower to quit the game. So they were of no assistance to me then. There was no point in writing to them again to get their help.
The sounds of gunfire came from the street, yanking me back to my “virtual” reality. I whirled around, my hands hovering above the holsters, ready to draw the revolvers. Flynn made a quick one-eighty as well, his body tensed.
The pounding of feet on the sidewalk was getting louder and louder. Then we heard what sounded like an explosion near the building we were in. Flynn and I watched the entrance door intently, ready to confront whoever might burst inside. Yet the pounding started to recede and soon it was quiet again.
Flynn relaxed and slid his shotgun into its scabbard on his back. Once our eyes met, he instantly looked the other way. Only then did I realize that he must have read the letter from Desert Wanderers as well. Now I had to tell him everything.
So I related the story of my being trapped in the game, making Cooper’s acquaintance, and finding out about Desert Wanderers––a clan that supposedly lent a hand to novices and players in trouble. The only information I held back was that I’d been transferred from 2018. Flynn would’ve considered me to be a total headcase had I told him about that.
Flynn looked astonished. It figured.
“So I’m stuck in here,” I concluded.
Flynn kept his mouth shut for a few moments, seeming to muse over my story. Then he asked, “You can’t quit the game, huh? I heard there aren’t such issues in video games anymore. Developers have long since fixed it.”
“Yeah, I know” I answered as I lifted my left hand and looked at the crystal embedded into my flesh just below the wrist. “It’s a shame other players cannot see your Main Menu. Otherwise, you’d see that the Quit button is gray-colored and that it is inactive in my Main Menu. I can’t press it no matter how long or intently I look at it.”
“Perhaps your real body slid off a gaming chair somehow and the virtual reality helmet on your head banged on the floor and got broken,” Flynn said.
I didn’t know what to say as I had no idea where my real body was at the moment. Yet thanks to Flynn’s speculation, I learned that in order to connect to the game a player had to settle themselves in a special gaming chair and put on a virtual reality helmet. Then his or her body lay still while the player’s mind wandered around the game world.
Flynn was silent for a short while. Then he said, “Perhaps I can help you if you like.”
I’d hoped that Flynn would offer to help, yet I didn’t get all that excited now that he did. For if even the developers had failed to find and fix the glitch––or they just pretended that nothing was wrong––what could Flynn possibly do to help me?
As if in response to my thoughts, Flynn said, “I could reach out to your friends or relatives so that they’ll come over and remove the helmet from your head.”
Since I couldn’t tell him that I had no idea where my body was in the real world, I said, “Ain’t going go to work. I live on my own and have got neither relatives nor friends.”
For the first time, there was a sign of disbelieve on Flynn’s face.
“What about neighbors? You should be talking to them every now and then.”
“I got no neighbors as well. Consider me something like a hermit. I hardly ever leave my house and seldom meet other people. So I got nobody in the real world who could help me out.”
It was downright bullshit and Flynn didn’t buy it for a moment. There was an expression of complete disbelief on his face. Yet instead of accusing me of lying to him, he asked, “How can I help you out then?”
“There’s something you can do for me. You’ve been visiting the official forum, haven’t you? Could you create a new thread there and tell people about me, a player being trapped in the game?”
“Sure I can,” Flynn replied sounding doubtful. “But why? I don’t see how it can help you.”
“The developers want to conceal the story about a player trapped in the game. So it’s important that people learn about this glitch. Once other players become aware of this, the developers will be forced to fix this issue ASAP and I’ll finally get to quit the game.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks, pal.”
“You’re welcome,” He answered and instantly added, “Listen, I gotta go offline in a few minutes. I’ll create the thread as soon as I’m off. Can you show me your bus now? I’ll check it out and then we’ll decide what upgrades it needs. ”
“All right.”
We got to my garage and pulled inside. Flynn walked around the bus for a spell, examining it. He was surprised to find out that half of the bodywork was already covered with armor.
“It’s almost finished,” Flynn exclaimed, astonished. “How long will it take you to cover the other half with armor?”
“A few hours.”
Flynn nodded and said that I didn’t have to unlock any new crafting skills since he already had all the necessary skills for creating turret guns and various devices for a vehicle. He suggested I cover the other half of the bus with armor while he would be offline.
“And when I’m back, we’ll begin installing turret guns and other stuff.”
After he went offline, I just lingered in my garage, brooding over my predicament for a while. All I could think of was the thread Flynn was going to create on the forum and the possible consequences of it. The developers wouldn’t be able to keep this story in secret any longer, for sure. What would they do when people learned about a player trapped in the game?
Then I thought that time would pass more quickly if I found something to do. It was still morning, so I decided to get to the garbage dump and gather resources while there were few players in the game.
After a few hours passed, I returned to the garage and set about reinforcing the bus with armor. Soon the work was done. I took a step backward and looked the bus over. It looked like a huge metal container on the four big wheels. In other words, it was just perfect. It didn’t need to look attractive. Rather, it had to be tough to destroy.
I walked over to the builder and brought up the vehicle’s stats.
> Name: Monster
> Armor: 155000/155000
> Speed: 10/100 (–5)
> Stability: 25/100
> Nitro: The vehicle has no nitrous oxide engine installed.
Seemed like I’d overdone it on the armor––now the bus’ speed got reduced a bit. Not that it bothered me, the speed would boost after we upgraded the engine. I would have gotten to it right off had I had the necessary resources on me, but I didn’t have them. Moreover, I had no idea as to where to find them, but Flynn should know though.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t long before a message popped up in the log.
> Your friend Flynn is online!
Almost instantly another one emerged before my eyes. “I’m back. Standing right next to your garage. Can you let me in?”
I opened the gates and he got in. First of all, he examined the bus once more. He was pleased to find out that I’d already finished covering the bus with armor. He said that our next step was to create turret guns.
“How long before you have to go off again?” I wanted to know.
“I’ve done my chores in real life so now I can play for a long time.”
“Okay. Let’s get to our upgrade job then.”
“Wait. While I was offline, I was surfing the forum and chanced on something interesting.”
I got excited, for I thought Flynn had learned something about my predicament.
“To create powerful turret guns for our bus we’re going to need a whole lot of various rare resources. They are very scarce in this location. As I surfed the forum, I asked around for helpful hints on this subject and learned that all the required resources we could get from Reaper. Then I took a crash course in dealing with him.”
“Reaper?” I asked as I remembered that I’d already come across this name on the first day. “Who’s that?”
“It’s a Raid Boss. There’s one in each location in this game. The local Raid Boss is Reaper. He gets revived every three days. And he’s reviving today. So we could get to his lair and kill the boss to get all the needed resources at once. Reaper is a half-mechanical, half-organic creature created by the aliens. They were trying to turn one mutant into a perfect killing machine. But Reaper refused to do their bidding. He managed to get away from them and holed up on Earth.”
“The aliens, huh?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you read the plot of the game? There was a war between humans and aliens and the latter won, leaving the Earth in ruins. Only a handful of people survived. The player is one of such survivors. All the mutants that the players kill were created by the aliens. Moreover, although the war is long since over, the aliens didn’t go back to their homeworld. Instead, they constructed the space station to keep tabs on every move of the surviving humans. The developers are going to update the game soon to add the main quest where all the survivors are going to team up, combine their scarce resources, and take revenge on the aliens.”
Flynn seemed so excited about all this it made me worry. I said, “Look, with your scouring the forum for useful hints and everything, you probably forgot about my request.”
Flynn looked a bit offended by my remark. “Who do you think I am? A liar? I’ve promised you, haven’t I? Of course, I created the thread you asked me to. I also checked on it from time to time to see if anyone replied. There were no messages from other players the last time I checked, but a few people had already read the thread. Moreover, I wrote a letter to the developers so that they were in the loop about a player trapped in the game.”
“Thank you, bud. I appreciate it.”
Flynn nodded and started to talk about Reaper again. He changed the subject so easily, and it figured. It was me who was stuck in the game, not him.
Besides, it seemed that he wasn’t buying my story for a moment. Sure, he had fulfilled his promise to me and posted the forum thread just like he said he would. However, he did not believe that I was a hermit who had neither friends nor relatives and never left the game while somehow getting stuck inside it. Again, he had said that those issues had been long since resolved.
I wondered what the developers would do now that they had received another message about the player trapped in the game. Would they keep denying the fact?
“So the raid bosses drop a lot of various useful items,” Flynn continued rattling. “Being that Reaper is half-mechanical, he drops various resources and parts used for crafting and upgrading vehicles. He also drops rare items, namely weapons and armor. Reaper can even drop a legendary item if we’re fortunate enough.”
I just nodded, still brooding over my predicament.
“Reaper is quite tough to kill, which is why there’re lots of various guides on the forum. One of them explains the way a group of three players can deal with him. Basically, there have to be three players on the team. Two Warlocks and one Soldier. Instead of a Soldier, there can be an Engineer whose drones have a high damage output, and my turrets fit the bill. They deal––as you know––pretty good damage.”
“So we need one more Warlock,” I observed.
“Yeah. I know of one player playing a Warlock.”
“Okay. What’s the plan then?”
And Flynn told me.
Reaper was a huge mutant armed with two machine guns and a rocket launcher. Also, the Raid Boss had two types of behavior, Normal and Berserk. While in Normal mode, Reaper wasn’t all that dangerous. He walked toward a player rather slowly, firing his two heavy machine guns that dealt little damage.
He could also spat an acid ball. It could easily kill a player who had little HP and it could place a debuff which ate away at their armor. Flynn warned me that an acid ball was immune to Telekinesis.
Moreover, an acid ball left a slowly expanding greenish smoke in the air. It took a few minutes for the acid smoke to dissipate, so the player had to make sure not to go through it lest the debuff be placed on them.
While in Normal mode, Reaper could also attack with rocket barrages. He unleashed three salvos, one after the other. Missiles fired in groups of twenty and dealt lots of damage, so a player should avoid being hit by any of them. When Reaper fired rockets, he stood still because he used a power shield on himself.
Each projectile first fired up into the air, locked onto a player and then homed in on them. The “locking” on to a player lasted for several seconds, so the player had to be quick to have some chance of avoiding being hit.
Reaper used the rocket attack three times, then dropped the power shield. Once he did this, he would continue to chase the players and both fire his machine guns and spit more acid balls.
No matter how many hit points (HP's) he had left, after the third rocket had launched, Reaper always went into berserk mode. He then dropped his guns and rocket launcher and grew two huge blade-like appendages from his hands.
While in the Berserk mode, he was extremely dangerous. Reaper would not walk, but rather ran after the players at this point.
>
Once he got within striking range, Reaper would then swing his blades at the players trying to damage them as much as possible. After or so blows, a player attired in good leather armor would be done for.
If a player was out of range, Reaper could perform a huge jump toward a player. The gamer who was too close to where Reaper landed got a debuff called Stunning, which prevented the unfortunate player from moving for a few seconds.
Reaper could spat acid balls in this mode too.
So it was necessary that there was a Soldier on a team as this class had plenty of HP and could equip and wear heavy armor.
The core strategy was basically to survive his rocket and blade attacks. A group of four was recommended, with at least one Soldier wearing heavy armor. To deal damage to Reaper players could shoot at any part of his body. His health didn’t restore itself and after he mutated into a berserk, his HP didn’t get recovered either but stayed the same. Reaper also had a vulnerable spot, which was inside his mouth. The problem was that he opened his mouth only before spitting out an acid ball.
“So you suggest we wait for him to open his mouth, then walk up to him and shoot him in the maw?” I quizzed.
“No, it’s totally dangerous,” Flynn shook his head. “We’d only have about a second before he spat out acid. There’s an altogether different approach to deal with Reaper.”
“Which is?”
Flynn said that after turning in a berserk, Reaper got way more dangerous. For that reason, players tried to reduce his HP by as many points as possible while he was in the Normal mode. In terms of our group, Reaper would surely deal with all three of us if he mutated.
“So we have to whack the sonofabitch before he turns into a mutant,” Flynn concluded.
“Is that possible?”
“Yeah. Sure, it ain’t easy, but it’s feasible. The trick is to use his rocket barrages against him.”
Glitch Book Four Page 1
