Glitch Boxset

by Victor Deckard

  Guard looked back over his shoulder as well. He fixed his gaze on me and I saw a message appear in my HUD.

  > The player Guard has invited you in a group!

  > (Do you want to join the group: Yes/No)

  Guard spoke up, “Listen, bud. I know what you’re thinking. You reckon that we’re going to lure you into a trap. Rest assured, we are not. So make up your mind. If you don’t trust us so be it. Feel free to leave. If you want to join, then accept the invitation and get inside.”

  He had said nothing special, yet his calm, confident voice somehow dissipated my doubts and convinced me there was no trap. I accepted the invitation. The players’ nicknames instantly turned green.

  Moreover, I saw Melissa through one wall of the building. Or more specifically, I saw the outline of her body. Judging from a position her body was in, the girl was seated in an armchair with her arms lying on the armrests.

  > Name: Melissa

  > Level: 6

  Finally, I said, “All right, I’m in.”

  “There you have it,” Stan exclaimed. “Glad we can count on you.”

  Guard just gave me a nod with the same somber expression on his face. Both the players entered the building, with me tagging along after them.

  Seemed like it was no trap, after all.

  Chapter seven

  After we entered the building, I looked at Melissa. The girl was small, slender, and mousy-looking. No, she wasn’t unattractive. Her features just were bland and forgettable. She looked fourteen or fifteen years old. The girl met my eyes for a half a second, pouted her pink lips, and, with a “hmph”, turned her head away from me, which clearly said, “I don’t like you and got no intention of talking to you.”

  Guard shut the door behind us, walked up to me, and quizzed, “All right, Max, what skills do you have?”

  “Surge, Shield, Disarming,” I started to count out my psi-powers. “All of these are fully upgraded.”

  “Same here,” Melissa declared. “I got all these skills fully upgraded too.”

  Neither Guard nor Stan paid her any attention.

  “What else do you got?”

  “Blow, Acceleration, Flare. Each of these has level 3 as well,” I replied as I looked at Melissa. A smug expression plastered on her face told me she had these skills too.

  “The Blow will come in handy,” Stan observed. “It lifts several foes at once in the air, right? Pretty useful skill. Especially, when there’re a lot of mobs all around you. Melissa got this skill too, by the way.”

  I nodded agreement.

  “What else?” Guard posed a question.

  “Telekinesis, Biokinesis, Vortex trap.”

  “What trap?” Stan inquired. “What is it?”

  I looked at the girl once again. She pursed her lips as she glared at me.

  “You don’t have this skill?”

  I didn’t mean to razz the girl or something. I didn’t mean any harm at all. I was just curious as to why she hadn’t bothered to unlock the Vortex trap, which was, in my humble opinion, such a useful psi-power. Nevertheless, Melissa freaked out over my seemingly innocent question for some weird reason.

  She leaped to her feet and balled her fists in anger. Her face reddened with rage.

  “It’s a useless skill,” She sputtered her reply. “Totally worthless! It can affect only one mob at a time!”

  “Is it so?” Stan asked me.

  “Yep, she’s right,” I admitted. “This skill impacts on one player or mob at the same time.”

  Oddly enough, the girl instantly cooled off. Seeing that I wasn’t going to argue the point, she settled back into the armchair with a smug smile on her face.

  The Vortex trap skill had really aided my attempt to deal with the two PKs. Yet I was well aware that Stan and Guard were looking for skills capable of croaking or at least immobilizing several mobs at the same time since there were a lot of monsters swarming the streets at night. This was why I didn’t tell them how I’d whooped the PK’s asses with the assistance of the Vortex trap skill. It was irrelevant to the matter at hand, so I didn’t say anything about it.

  “That you’ve got the Telekinesis skill is really handy,” Stan said shattering my reverie. “Melissa told us it can affect several foes at once.”

  “That’s right, you can do it but with one condition,” I clarified the point. “Mana consumption depends on the weight of the object you want to pull with the Telekinesis. The heavier the object, the more Mana you deplete. I’ve never tried to affect several mobs at once, but I’m certain that it would deplete Mana in no time flat. From where I stand, it ain’t very smart to apply the Telekinesis to several mobs at once. It’s too expensive in terms of Mana consumption.”

  As I spoke, Melissa got angry. Seemed like she disagreed with me on everything.

  “If you got enough vigors, you don’t need to worry about Mana,” She declared, her eyes glaring her rage.

  “Which means that you got enough vigors on you?”

  “Yeah, Guard and me have bought her numbers of vigors,” Stan chimed in with the explanation. “So that she won’t sustain a lack of Mana during the impending invasion of night mobs.”

  I turned my head toward Melissa. Seeing that she had such a short fuse, I began, selecting my words very carefully, “You might want to go easy on the Telekinesis tomorrow night lest you use up all your consumables in nothing flat.”

  She was so livid she seemed to be about to take a swing at me. Perhaps she would, had Guard not stepped between us.

  “Knock it off, you two,” He scolded us. “I don’t want to see any more fighting. We’re the ream. If you’re going to fight each other instead of mobs, we’ll never get through tomorrow night. We’ve got to get along with one another in order to survive the impending swarm of mobs.”

  I kept quiet. Melissa clammed up for once. Although I wasn’t looking her way, I could feel her smoldering eyes on me. I had no idea as to why the girl was so angry with me. Either she didn’t like me for some reason or having frequent temper tantrums just was her little, odd ways.

  Seeing that we no longer argue, Guard looked me in the eye and inquired, “All right, do you have any other skills? Or is that all?”

  “Only the Stasis. Fully upgraded as well.”

  “What is this?” Stan quizzed. “How does this Stasis work?”

  “Doesn’t Melissa have it?” I glanced at the girl, sincerely hoping she wouldn’t throw another temper tantrum, on account of my question.

  “Nope,” the girl snapped, replying for herself.

  “She might unlock it later on if it’s worth it,” Guard answered watching the girl in case she charged at me to deliver a haymaker. Still, Melissa remained immobile, tight-lipped. “What does that skill do?”

  I explained the Stasis psi-power in simple terms. Stan instantly perked up. Even the mood of gloomy-looking Guard ratcheted up a few notches.

  “It’s a very nice skill,” Guard said approvingly.

  “See,” Stan addressed Melissa. “It was a good idea to admit another Warlock into the group after all.”

  Muttering something under her breath, the girl walked over to the armchair and plopped into it as if she were exhausted. She turned to glare in the direction of the far wall.

  “All right, it’s time we familiarized you with our plan,” Guard said. “So during the first three waves––”

  Guard fell silent as I gave him a puzzled look.

  “Waves? What is that?”

  “Players fight through waves of mutants attempting to eliminate the players at night. It’s called assault waves. We like to shorten it to waves, for the sake of convenience.”

  Guessed I still looked perplexed since Guard asked me, “How long have you been playing the game? How many nights have you gone through? I’d assume, not too many, right?”

  “Yeah, only one.”

  “And it seems like you didn’t get through it?”

/>   “Yeah. Got whacked at the very beginning.”

  “Okay, here’s a crash course for you.”

  He told me that the player had to fight through ten waves of mutant-like mobs at night, with each assault wave getting more and more difficult. Each wave lasted around twenty to thirty minutes. Killed mobs would drop ammo, stimulators, vigors, even weapons and armor sometimes, and whatnot.

  Once the wave ended, mobs ceased to spawn and the player had to deal with the remaining monsters.

  In the time between each wave, the player could reinforce the building he or she held out in, patch up themselves, pick up the loot, and get prepared for the next wave. Each break lasted about five minutes.

  The player could try to get through the night on his own or they can team up with other players. During each wave mob constantly spawned all around the player. As assault waves passed, the mob count, which scaled with the number of players in the group, would increase and different mob types would be introduced.

  Also, extremely powerful monsters would spawn during the last few assault waves. One could even name these kinds of mobs bosses. Each kind of a boss had different strengths and weaknesses and required a different strategy for defeating it.

  If the player’s HP was drained, they got disconnected from the game and had to wait until after it was morning in here to reconnect to the game. If the player was on a team, he or she couldn’t revive until the end of the current assault wave. If all the players on the team got killed simultaneously, the game ended.

  Guard knew all this for having gotten through most of the assault waves once. He’d managed to fend off the six waves and perished during the seventh, getting killed by one of the bosses.

  After that, Guard decided to team up with other players in order to get through nights together. He found an appropriate house, the building we were now in, reinforced it, and invited Stan, with whom he made friends earlier on, to survive tomorrow night. Shortly afterward, they met Melissa, a girl who played the Warlock class, and invited her to their group. She agreed to join. Melissa was certain they could handle the invasion of night monsters, but the guys wished they’d found another player to join their team.

  Then Guard told me that the first three waves were easy as pie. All we had to do was stick together instead of spreading out. We’d stay on the first floor. Each of us would take up their own respective positions to have the entire floor covered.

  As of the fourth wave, flying mobs would begin to spawn, which would be trying to crash through the second floor windows.

  “Mantises?” I inquired, amazed.

  “Nah,” Guard shook his head. “Not mantises but some other winged critters. They’re smaller and weaker but nevertheless pretty annoying. Also, spiders will show up as well. They can crawl up the walls. So one of us is going to go upstairs to defend the second floor.”

  Stan said he’d take up the upstairs position. There were going to be few spiders and winged creatures upstairs so one player would be enough for defending the second floor. Melissa would stick close to the set of stairs, just in case Stan needed assistance.

  Starting from the fifth wave, spiders and winged critters would spawn in great amounts. Melissa would have to join Stan in defending the second floor. So each floor would be defended by a pair of players.

  Before I joined the group, their plan had differed from the current one. Melissa would’ve had to assist Stan and Guard alternately all night long. She would’ve consumed too many vigors well before the night ended. Moreover, running up and down the stairs constantly and dealing with hordes of mobs perhaps would’ve been too hard on her. Sooner or later, she would’ve snapped or made a blunder, which might’ve resulted in all their group being killed. That had been why they’d sought the fourth player to join them.

  With the seventh wave started, bosses would show up. It’d be time for the Warlocks. Melissa and myself would have to check and slow down the swarm of monsters at all costs while Stan and Guard would fight a boss. All bosses incredibly strong and robust. So Stan and Guard would have to turn their full attention to a boss without having to distract their attention from it to deal with weaker mobs.

  The guys also familiarized me with the layout of the building. I understood why Guard had chosen this particular house. It was pretty big and spacious, with a lot of wide corridors and doorways, which was why it would be impossible for mobs to have a player cornered.

  However, the guys told me that we’d better not to let mobs get inside the house. Sure, soon or later monsters would find a way to crash into the building, but we had to hold them off for as long as possible.

  “What if mobs will spawn in the house?” I wanted to know remembering what had happened last night. I’d gotten inside one house and hidden myself in a room on the second floor, yet one of the monsters had spawned right inside it.

  Guard replied that the house was considered a safe zone for him due to his having secured it. So now mobs could spawn only outside this place but not inside it. And since he’d admitted all of us to his group, the same went for us.

  After that, Guard said that in the time between each wave we’d be gathering the loot, namely ammo, stimulators, vigors, and other items having dropped from killed mobs. We also would have to repair broken windows and doors. Since I’d never gotten to do this, I had no idea as to how to do the repairing in this game.

  Guard told me that one had to unlock a particular skill from the Building tab of the Skill tree. Also, one had to have some amount of resources. It was metal in our case. I hadn’t learned this skill yet and Melissa didn’t have it as well so the girl and myself would be gathering up the loot while the task of repairing broken windows and doors would fall on Stan and Guard.

  By the time the guys finished explaining everything to me, it was already dark in the street. A message appeared in the log.

  > Warning! The night will fall in 60 minutes!

  We had only one hour left to make final preparations. We went downstairs and the guys showed me all the ways out. One of the doors led to a garage. I noticed it was pretty spacious, yet there weren’t any vehicles, which made me wonder where the vehicles of the players were.

  As things turned out, none of them had a car. Each had lost their car one way or the other. Melissa had her car jacked. She hadn’t known at the time that one could steal another player’s vehicle.

  Stan had gotten attacked by an armored combat car of some high-level player. They totaled Stan’s vehicle. The guy tried to climb out of the car, but the driver’s side door got jammed. He couldn’t get out so he was burned alive inside the cab. When Stan told me about it, I recoiled in horror.

  As for Guard, he told me that he’d just run out of gas. He hadn’t know where to find or buy a tank of gas, and still didn’t, so he’d ditched his car.

  “It might still be where I’ve left it,” He speculated, though the tone of his voice indicated he didn’t really believe in it.

  “No way,” Stan smirked. “It must long since have been cannibalized for the parts, for sure. Or someone might’ve gassed it up and hit the road.”

  > Warning! The night will fall in 30 minutes!

  The message made us all get serious at once. Well, except for Melissa. Her mood instantly racked up for some reason. The girl snapped out of her gloominess and wasn’t sulking any longer. The corners of her mouth turned up and she got a gleam in her eyes. The girl was really excited.

  Stan and Guard set about counting ammo and stimulators and checking on the state of their stuff. Stan found out that one of his shoulder armor was slightly damaged and commenced repairing it. I recollected my destroyed biker helmet and removed it from my bag.

  “Say, can this be repaired given how badly it’s damaged?”

  “It can be. Gimme it.”

  “You need resources to repair it, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The helmet is metal so I need met
al.”

  “I got some. Wait a sec.”

  “No need, bro. Save it until later. You might have to share your metal tonight if we need it for reinforcing the house.”

  After a few moments, Stan returned the helmet to me. It looked brand-new, not a scratch or dent on the shiny surface. I was grateful for his help and wanted to return the favor somehow. Then it dawned on me. I unslung the Predator and held the rifle out to Stan. It’d certainly stand him in good stead.

  “Take it if you like. I don’t need it anyway, what with me being the Warlock.”

  “Where did you get this beauty?” He asked, amazingly examining the stats’ of the rifle.

  I could’ve told him the whole story of my having gotten even with the two PKs. Yet night was about to fall, which was why I didn’t want to waste much time. So I just said that the rifle dropped from some PK I’d recently iced.

  “I’ve got a level 10 pistol,” Stan replied. “Can give it to ya. It’s ‘green’, but it got additional fire damage. But I don’t have it on me because I have it stashed in my lair so I only can hand it over after we survive the night.”

  “Okay.”

  Stan grinned revealing white teeth, “Sure, it ain’t fair to trade the ‘purple’ rifle you’ve given me for a ‘green’ weapon so I can give you something else. What’s else do I have? Let’s see––”

  Before he could finish, another message popped up.

  > Warning! The night will fall in 20 minutes!

  “Hey guys,” Guard said. “We don’t have much time left. Hold off on your trading thing until after the night, okay? As of now, we gotta concentrate all our effort on getting through the night.”

  “He’s right,” Stan nodded agreement. “The impending battle against night mobs is more important than anything else now. Because if we die, we, as likely as not, will lose the rifle.”