Respawn: The Last Crossing (Respawn LitRPG series Book 6)

by Arthur Stone

  During the fight with the Unnamed One, Cheater had watched the whole thing from an excellent position. He had a wonderful eye not only of March’s lonely figure but also of all the approaches towards him. He could not actually see the terrifying monster, but he was not complaining about the view.

  Clown would have loved it.

  This time was different. Cheater, Maple, Beetle, and Clown hung out in the boat about a hundred yards away from the ancient temple island’s eastern shore. The ruins from this angle completely blocked their view. March and the Janitor were utterly hidden from here, even though they had climbed up the obelisk.

  All they could do, then, was watch the chat window attentively, reading the rare comments dropped by the suicide bomber pair as they waited for the signal.

  And listen to Clown’s groans of dismay. Their companion lived for the spectacle, and the prospect of missing out on a fight with the Trinity was too much to bear. He would have likely agreed to sacrifice a life just to witness it.

  No one was about to let him.

  Trinity hunting was not a spectator sport.

  The comments the both of the bombers made were hardly informative. March would at time announce a great victory over another few cans—despite his protests, the others had not helped him finish them off—and the Janitor was still complaining about the man’s cruelty in forbidding any healing on him.

  No, the point was not to save the healer’s mana. The true reason was clear to anyone with half a brain. The boss feared that the Janitor might survive the disastrous ability that was about to strike. He also was carrying a Shard of Invulnerability—and might use it. Theoretically even that was incapable of saving someone at the epicenter of the strike, but no one had that down to a science, nor did anyone truly know what a developed quasi’s capabilities were.

  If he survived now, he would not be in very good shape. Consequently, there would be less of a chance that he would be able to cunningly stab his comrade in the back and steal all of the loot. Including the white pearls he needed. One may not be enough to recover human form, but two or three provided an excellent change.

  March was in his element. Trusting no one. Only Cheater had somehow managed to prove he could be relied on. Yet March had not abandoned all doubts even with him. Anyone else in the Janitor’s place would have been swearing up just as mighty a storm.

  It was an unpleasant situation, to be sure. Players on the Continent always kept focused on themselves. The interests of others only mattered as far as they aligned with their own.

  The Trinity was taking its time. Clown was impatiently beginning to speculate, to hypothesize. One major theory of his had the overly wise creatures huddling and devising a cunning plan. Another was that the Janitor only pretended to lure them—but was actually using his skill to drive them away. It did seem that March did not know everything about the quasi. Including his abilities. Why had he not driven away the horde yesterday, then? Or during the first crossing, why had he not cleared the bridge over the road, from which ghouls had dropped and deprived the party of its pickup?

  The new information created many questions around the topic of the Janitor. Some, none could answer but him. So with him gone, Clown fell to fantasizing and theorizing.

  Most of those speculations were far from flattering.

  The radio hissed. Through the strong interference of the borderlands, March’s voice came through.

  “Get ready.”

  All conversation halted. Cheater was about to ask what the situation was like, but then his ears caught a sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight.

  And quite possibly go gray.

  The grumbling of infecteds. So huge were these infecteds that here, a hundred yards away from the land, that sound was still perfectly clear. It was coming, not from one of the shores, but from somewhere among the ruins. Perhaps even on the other side of the island.

  Impressive vocal cords.

  Then, other sounds joined the mix. One sounded like a powerful wrecking ball working at high speed. Smashing the ruins apart.

  Cheater winced as he imagined what was happening to March and the Janitor. They were atop the bizarre ancient obelisk. Now, one or two massive beasts were playing Jenga with the ruins below. The humans, meanwhile, were holding on tight and patiently waiting for the third to arrive.

  “I see the third nearby,” the radio supplied. “Had to use a shard. Foxes almost got me...”

  Cheater couldn’t see a thing, but he doubted March’s shard was in response to the shuddering of the obelisk. The beasts had likely tried to hit the players with some kind of dangerous ability. Whether the three of them came together or not, within thirty seconds the boss would have to play his deadliest trump card.

  “Cheater, now!” March ordered.

  He intended for Cheater to use a Shard of Invulnerability, too, but the player did not. He had used his valuable perk gained at the crossing—strengthening an ability’s bonus property—on Smile of Fortune. It gave him invulnerability for five seconds now, instead of three.

  First, though, he used Helping Hand. Only then did he use Smile.

  The bonus invincibility now lasted for 50 seconds, not just five. That was even longer than a shard without Helping Hand.

  He wasn’t sure that the immunity they provided was equivalent, but there was no great reason to doubt this.

  March’s icon went out. Maple wasn’t the first to notice—all four saw it at the same time because they had been staring at the party map.

  They were in a dark boat, on a dark swamp, with their view blocked by reeds and ruins. What else was there to watch?

  * * *

  Clown leaned out from behind a heap of stone blocks, relaxed, and lowered his gun with an amazed exhalation. “Holy shit!”

  Cheater joined him and nearly repeated the same words.

  He had seen all kinds of infecteds during his time on the Continent. Elites, and even dire elites, far past level 100.

  These far surpassed dires. The Trinity looked so fearsome even after death that he felt a deep respect for their might. It was no wonder that they had been named with a capital letter. Prohibitive size had little to do with it. These monsters were modest compared to the rumors surrounding them. Standing to full height, they were likely under thirty feet tall. No, there was a je ne sais quoi, something he could not put his finger on. Perhaps it was their monsterly perfection. All of the others he had seen were obviously in development. They were in some stage of development, from primitive, to challenging, to colossal, to complete.

  These looked like the apex of development. The logical final form. All other ghouls were incomplete, and held various forms. These three, though, looked mostly alike. Their armor didn’t even look that thick—though they apparently had defenses against every threat imaginable. Their bone plates were vastly sleeker and more symmetrical than those of any ghoul he had encountered before. It was like the most advanced plate armor, just before the age of firearms.

  “Holy shit!” Beetle echoed Clown’s words—and the words spinning through everyone’s mind.

  “Are they really dead?” Maple asked cautiously.

  Cheater reluctantly turned. “Head back to the coast. Just to be on the safe side. Let us sort it out.”

  No, the infecteds were not what bothered him. Cheater had not let his guard down, even as he stood amazed at their hideous beauty. The first thing he had done upon returning to the obelisk was activate Flash. He detected no signs of life from any of the carcasses.

  This hardly assuaged his worries.

  For instance, where was the Janitor, and how was he doing? His icon had not gone out. It continued blinking. The map showed that the quasi was nearby, but his exact location could not be pinpointed by the map alone. There were many levels within the ruins, and he could be hiding within them.

  But no, he was easily found. He emerged from around a corner and hobbled over on his injured legs, then stretched out a huge paw to Cheater
. On it lay the lacework-pattern ball of a Shard of Invulnerability.

  “Take this. I didn’t need it,” the quasi boomed.

  “How did you survive without it?” Cheater wondered tensely.

  The Janitor winked. “Big freaks like us have our secrets. But it was not easy, I’ll tell you that. So take it.”

  Cheater shook his head. “March gave it to you, so if you want to return it, give it to him.”

  “Where’s March, then?” the quasi grunted.

  “With us. In the party. Even if he’s gone for a bit. He’s in charge. Do you agree?”

  The quasi sighed wearily. “No need to drag me into this. I know you and March have a special trust between you. And you don’t trust anyone. I understand that—he’s not a trusting person. Like almost everyone here. I’m even willing to forgive the fact that he didn’t let me get healing. But don’t you also pour your suspicions over my bald head. Smell something fishy? Then kill me, right here, right now. It’s easier to respawn than to deal with you drilling me with looks like that for days. I wish you would quit being so nervous around me.”

  He tried to make his voice light and sarcastic with that last sentence, but the effect was funny for other reasons: the hole in his cheek had an unpredictable effect on acoustics. Clown couldn’t resist a grin.

  “We’ll talk about trust later,” Cheater said. “There’s something else first.”

  “What else?” Beetle cocked an eyebrow. “We need to get their sporesacs. Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”

  The quasi shook his head. “Cheater’s right. Something is wrong.”

  “What is that?” Clown said as he kicked the nearest monster.

  Cheater clicked his radio. “Maple, hide somewhere on the shore, and stay hidden.”

  “What shit are we about to get into now?” Clown grabbed his machine gun again.

  Cheater hit his Flash of Omniscience again. “No victory message.”

  There were hundreds of reasons a victory message might be delayed—and it could even be delayed for no reason. Sometimes, the System issued it in the middle of a battle, or half an hour after the final shot was fired. It was unpredictable.

  But players who had seen a lot of logs were wary whenever the usual patterns were broken. So Cheater peered through the interwoven, lifeless lines and curves of the ancient stone structures. He highlighted everything biological. Grass and low shrubs shone in blue. The huge crimson-red spots of the three monsters were highlighted, too. Little sparks and blobs betrayed the hiding places of rodents, snakes, and lizards. What was going on? Nothing but useless junk and harmless animals. But something was clearly wrong. The absence of a victory message was not the only clue. His premonition was screaming at him.

  Behind you! It was definitely behind. All other directions had been examined and were clean.

  Cheater slowly turned, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw something out of place. The space had been clean, with a thick windowless wall twenty paces back.

  Instead of the expected interweaving lines of the ancient structures, his peripheral vision saw red.

  Solid, monolithic, homogenous red, from top to bottom.

  Cheater did not complete the turn. He had seen enough to know that whatever was happening was a threat to them all.

  He twitched to the right, towards the passage that had led the group from the shore to the obelisk.

  That was all he had time to do. The air to the right rippled from an intense stream of heat, and congealed into a gigantic claw.

  It happened so fast and so close that Cheater could hardly perceive it. The first thing that claw did was hit the nearest player on the head.

  That player was Cheater.

  * * *

  Note: the Thanks Nolds! item is equipped. A situation threatening instant death has arisen. Chance of Avoiding Instant Death activated. Immunity to all harmful effects received for 2 seconds.

  Cheater had no time to read the message. It was very hard to read when you were hurtling through the air towards the obelisk March and Janitor had perched atop—all with one careless flick of a giant claw.

  He slammed into the stone at speeds barely subsonic, and...

  Instead of compressing into a bag of broken bones and battered muscles, his body fell to the ground unharmed. He was dazed a bit, but not enough to keep him from immediately hiding behind the obelisk. Cheater saw Beetle take a similar hit, sending him a little higher and further—and then a multi-ton monster appeared out of nowhere and elegantly leaped over to Clown, sweeping him away just as casually.

  Of course there had been no victory message.

  There had been no victory.

  The Trinity was indeed a Quaternity, as some had named it. The fourth beast had grown so powerful that it had approached unseen, and had waited for the earlier fight to end. It had stayed a distance away, covering its siblings as it took advantage of its effective camouflage ability.

  Chameleon couldn’t do anything like that.

  Cheater didn’t try to escape. There was no way to run. Even if the monster did not know about the boat, there was no getting past it. Moving through the water on foot was laughably pointless. If the monster had come here unnoticed, it did not fear getting its legs wet.

  He would have seconds, if that.

  So he bought a little time to gather his thoughts and his strength. He had to devise a plan to kill the fourth creature, and fast. There was only one of them, at least. If they had known about its existence beforehand, they may have been able to kill it without losing anyone.

  Even the most powerful infected could be tackled by a crowd. Especially a crowd of good fighters. Many players had succeeded in such fights—but the element of surprise had worked against the group in this one. Beetle was gone. Clown was gone. Whether the Janitor was alive or not, he didn’t know, and didn’t care.

  For the monster was eyeing the obelisk concealing its would-be victim. There was nowhere to go. The three seconds of immunity from his bracer were out, and the lifesaving property itself was in cooldown. Behind him rose a huge, solid wall of blocks.

  It was a dead end.

  An explosion rumbled a few yards away, and Cheater instinctively threw himself to the rocky ground. The quasi was standing in the arch of the largest surviving temple passage and had shot a grenade launcher. Now, he went to pick up another.

  The beast turned and rushed to the new threat. Fibers of blue discharges along its body. The Janitor had not pierced its hide but appeared to trigger some kind of defensive ability.

  If it only countered one attack and did not cool down immediately, the beast was now vulnerable.

  The quasi got the second launcher up in world record time. Doing so was usually far from a single quick motion, and the beast had ungodly speed.

  But the Janitor got the shot off.

  The grenade bounced harmlessly off of the creature’s thick neck.

  It didn’t work! The distance was too close for the explosive to go live. At a few paces away, grenades from launchers were not much better than throwing bricks.

  The beast hit. Instead of becoming a smear on the wall, the quasi flew a few yards and landed softly. This was intensely unnatural looking, like cheap special effects from a low-budget film.

  Then, the show really kicked off. The Janitor leaped up to his feet and began screaming in consuming rage, pounding the creature with a continuous volley from his twelve-millimeter machinegun.

  He had used the shard, after all. Now the elite would be unable to harm him for thirty seconds. It was a waste. The Janitor had no chance against the monster even with invincibility. Shooting it with that gun was like firing at it with a water pistol.

  It did give Cheater a chance, though.

  He had 30 seconds, as well. Either he could make a hopeless dash for the boat, or he could... do what? He didn’t have a decent weapon. The beast’s first attack had deprived him of his weapon. Retrieving it wouldn’t matter. No matter how much mana he poured int
o Explosive Round, he knew it would not punch through. He had tested it as they approached Rainbow, when they encountered the burned-out tank. If failed to pierce the heat-weakened armor, and if player stories and books were to be believed, tank armor was significantly inferior to that of an ultradire.

  The creature was playing a sort of ping pong at the moment. It had no rackets but its paws, and the ball was Janitor. She pounded him this way and that, in all directions. He lost the gun but was continuing the battle with his monstrous pistol. It was a desperate move, but the quasi’s willingness to fight to the end was laudable.

  The seconds were ticking away. Soon Cheater would be left alone.