The most dangerous thing that could happen was when the log-out process malfunctioned for some reason. The player’s brain was directly connected to VR via the neuro-plant. It wasn’t possible to simply pull the cord out and exit the simulation. The log-off process was a highly complicated procedure no user really understood. But the fact was, if the shit hit the fan, there wouldn’t be a back door with a bright glowing exit sign like in a movie theater. The system would begin an emergency log-out if it noticed the player’s brain’s signals were running amok, which could indicate a stroke, heart attack, or another emergency in the real world. But in most cases, it would be too late by then.
That was the reason why the system message had made Kai feel so uneasy. His intuition was telling him that something was wrong here. Very wrong.
“Ok, guys, you heard the lady,” he addressed the group. “Back away from the NPCs, especially the boss. Group up in the corners!”
Kai, Stan and a few others backed away as far as possible from the giant black menace and its minions, but Red, Cloud, Serene and the rest stayed where they were.
“Relax,” the guild leader said, displeased that Kai had taken the initiative to get the party to safety. “Nothing’s gonna happen. It’s just a glitch.”
“The leave instance option is jammed,” Serene said, concern in her voice. “Have any of you ever seen something like that?”
Kai opened the menu to see for himself. The leave instance option was grayed out and not clickable for him too.
“Nope,” Kai said. “And I don’t like it. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here.”
“Shit, I need to cook dinner for my kids. I can’t stay here forever,” Cloudgirl said.
“Well, fuck that, I’m out of here,” the healer declared. “I’m not gonna hang out in the twilight zone in a broken dungeon forever. I’m logging off.”
“The system said we shouldn’t do that,” Kai said.
“Screw the system,” the healer said.
A second later, his tone had changed.
“Um… it won’t let me.”
“It won’t let you exit the game and VR?” Stan asked.
“I’d shake my head but I can’t because I’m fucking dead!” the healer said.
“Guess we’re stuck here then, whether we like it or not,” Red said. “We could explore the dungeon a bit and see if we find some hidden stuff we would otherwise overlook when in combat. Maybe there’s hidden loot or secret passages.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” Kai objected. “The physics might be glitched, too. That would make it dangerous to fall off a cliff or something like that.”
“Pah,” Red said, now visibly annoyed. He stepped up to the frozen Guardian and kicked the giant spider in one of its hairy legs.
Suddenly all hell broke loose around them.
Without any warning, the Guardian came back to life. Letting out a bone-chilling shriek, the arachnid spewed the venomous green ichor over Red and the other players standing close by. It happened so fast that none of them had time to evade the attack, block, or cast a damage shield.
On his HUD, Kai saw how the health bars of all affected players had dropped by 30% and then continued going down due to the DoT nature of the poison.
“What the fuck!” Red screamed while the two others began shrieking frantically. “It burns! Oh my God, it burns like hell!”
All three dropped to the ground, convulsed in pain. Real pain.
There couldn’t be any doubt about that.
Everyone else stared at what was happening in disbelief and shock.
“Kai,” Stan grabbed his friend by the arm and pointed at the Guardian’s health bar. “Look!”
Not only was its health bar back at 100%, it had also turned from red to gold, and so had the whole name tag of the dungeon boss. Gold meant that the enemy was invincible. Usually players had no other choice but to run when they encountered a monster with a golden tag in the world. But this was a closed dungeon. There was no place to run!
“We’re so toast,” Stan whispered, his usual snarky attitude gone.
Kai froze as he saw that the spiderlings were back in the game, too. And they, too, were golden.
“Shields!” he called out. “Stack together!”
He surprised himself the second the words left his mouth. His heart was racing and existential fear threatened to overwhelm him, yet instead of being paralyzed by it, he took control of the situation.
The party members who were still standing followed his command and quickly gathered in one place, back to back. The first wave of spiderlings approached them, their huge fangs moving in their frightening maws, their multiple eyes glowing menacingly. Kai jerked his shield and bashed it into the three spiders closest to him. Two were thrown to the ground without taking any damage, but the third fell over the cliff into the darkness.
“What should we do?” Eldritch asked in a fearful voice. “They’re invincible!”
“Throw anything at them that will stall them,” Kai replied. “Ice, caltrops… anything! We need to buy us some time!”
On his HUD, Kai saw that the life stats of the three affected by the poison were now dropping rapidly. He glanced up and saw why.
The giant spider had moved directly over the three figures on the ground and was hitting them with its front legs, doing heavy damage. The two damage dealers would be down to zero in no time, and even Red, who was a tank, wouldn’t sustain such an attack for much longer.
What in the hell is happening here?
It seemed like a nightmare, something none of them thought could ever happen in real life. Such stuff was supposed to be confined to urban legends, nothing more. And yet…
Kai got a grip on himself and stopped staring at his friends being butchered.
“Heals! We need heals! Now!”
“Sorry, I can’t be of much help,” the fallen healer replied, oblivious to the dramatic scenes happening around him. “Hey… the log-off… it’s working!”
Life slammed her staff on the ground and a cloud of glowing particles appeared around the three fallen team members.
Kai sighed in relief. At least the heal worked. It saved the two DPSs just in time before their health bar reached zero. But it was only a temporary reprieve. If no one stopped the Guardian, the three would die. And so out of control was the system at the moment, that wouldn’t mean anything good.
“I need to get closer to cast a stronger heal!” Life said, her usual almost stoical calmness gone.
Meanwhile, the spiderlings were about to overrun the members of the group who were still standing.
A sharp pain ran like a bolt through Kai’s body, and he thought he would pass out. Never before had he experienced anything even remotely close to that. He winced and looked down at himself. A spiderling had bitten through the armor on his leg as if it were made of straw and was now ramming its fangs into his flesh. Kai’s health bar began dropping as venom sprayed into the wound. For a second, panic threatened to overwhelm him as all kinds of horror stories shot through his mind, about people actually dying in VR or having their consciousness trapped forever. It was true… it was all true.
Then his survival instinct kicked in and his reflexes took over. He had been playing this game for hundreds of hours. He could beat such spiderlings in his sleep, golden or not.
Kai rammed his sword into the spider, which answered the attack with a furious hiss but otherwise didn’t take any damage. Then he performed a power attack with his shield. The arachnid let go of his leg and rolled toward the cliff, hissing even more aggressively. But Kai wasn’t willing to give it a chance to get up again. He charged at the spiderling and kicked it off the cliff.
“We need to push them off the ledge!” he shouted. “That’s our only chance!”
A cloud of glowing particles surrounded him and he saw his life stats rising again. But the pain remained.
What the hell… How was this possible?
The three team members o
n the ground had stopped screaming and were now moaning and whimpering in agony and fear as the Guardian kept attacking them.
Suddenly a horrifying scream filled everyone’s head.
“Oh my God… oh my God… what’s happening?! No, no, no…”
It was the healer’s voice. His body was just about to disappear, yet not like in a normal log-off process. It flickered and glitched in shades of red, green and purple, like a broken piece of 3D graphics.
The healer screamed again, and this time his scream faded out in an eerie way as his body disappeared from the game.
“Shit!” Stan’s voice was filled with terror. “He’s gonna pounce! He’s gonna fucking pounce!”
Kai broke free from the horror that had temporarily frozen him after they witnessed the tragedy of the healer. His friend was right. The Guardian was preparing his pounce attack. As everyone had witnessed, the game mechanic was devastating when everything was running according to set parameters, but right now nothing seemed normal. This was by far the worst glitch Kai had ever seen or heard of.
Petrified, he watched as the giant spider flexed its legs. The tank might survive the attack but the two damage dealers certainly would not. And who could tell what would happen to a player that got killed under such crazy circumstances? His gut was telling him that this was not good. Not good at all.
Then everything happened in a blur. Without thinking any further about what he was doing, Kai bashed two spiders about to attack him with his shield, staggering them. He consumed a stam pod and a shield buff potion from his quickslot and charged toward his fallen comrades.
“Are you insane? What are you doing, mate?” he heard Stan call out after him, aghast.
Kai ignored him. From another quickslot, he consumed a potion that buffed his strength and speed by 30%. The massive arachnid jumped, three of its oversized claws aiming directly at the players still convulsing on the ground. Thanks to his buffs, Kai fell into an insane sprint, then he activated Shield Bash. It was a special attack that came with the Sword & Shield specialization, which he had leveled up to its maximum.
Using his momentum, he bashed his shield into the spider leg coming down toward Serene, who lay closest to him. It was as if he had run against a massive tree trunk with his shield. The impact robbed him of his breath, and he bounced backward. Yet, while falling to the ground, he saw that his attack had had an effect on the monster. His momentum had been enough to make the arachnid stagger before it could reach the ground. The giant claws missed the three people on the ground by mere inches when the Guardian finished his attack, leaving all three miraculously unharmed.
Kai sighed in relief.
That was close!
But he didn’t have much time to enjoy his successful kamikaze rescue mission. With a furious shriek that made Kai’s blood run cold, the arachnid turned its attention toward him.
“Oh crap…” Kai said, staring into the spider’s multiple, hateful eyes.
“Kai! Run!” Stan yelled in panic. “Run! For fuck’s sake!”
It became clear why he was panicking. Aiming at Kai, the giant spider was about to pounce again.
What is this? Kai thought, struck by fear.
Usually, boss AI followed a strict mechanic, a certain pattern of attacks. As they had seen before, the pounce happened as a scripted AoE attack, not as a counterattack against a single unit. This was almost conscious. This was revenge.
“KAI!” Stan yelled in despair.
Still on the ground, taking cover under his heavy shield, Kai crawled backward frantically. He wore heavy armor and was a warrior, and therefore lacked the agility to jump up and evade the area of attack. His feet scuffed up dirt as he desperately tried to get away, seeing the massive, hairy body jumping into the air and directly at him. He wouldn’t make it. He saw it at once.
Maybe his shield and armor would prevent him from being impaled, but it was doubtful. The boss mechanic made this attack an insta-death for a damage dealer, possibly for any player.
Paralyzed, he stared at the razor-sharp claw coming down at him.
Suddenly something incredible happened, something no one expected.
Right in the center of the cave, only a few feet away from where Kai was staring at his demise like a deer caught in headlights, a portal opened.
Yet it wasn’t like a portal any player of TSOTA had ever seen in this game. It appeared completely out of place in a medieval and fantasy-inspired setting. A glowing ring, it showed what was behind the graphics of the game, as if someone had opened a curtain, revealing the reality behind an illusion. The grid of the game engine was visible behind the portal. Numbers, vectors, algorithms.
Figures materialized in the portal, creatures consisting of code, like digital specters. Yet they quickly took shape, and when they stepped into the game world, they wore human bodies.
Staring at the portal with an open mouth, Kai realized that the spider had stopped its attack. He should have been impaled by now.
He moved his head, and it felt as if he were stuck in glue.
Lag. Massive lag.
The realization shot through Kai’s mind like a bolt. The Guardian hadn’t stopped its attack. And the game hadn’t frozen. The FPS[14] rate had dropped to a minimum.
Kai saw the giant claw still falling down toward him, aimed directly at his chest, but it was in ultra-slow motion now.
The figures jumping through the portal weren’t affected by the lag, however. On the contrary. While everyone and everything moved as if fallen into a honey pot, the newcomers moved lightning fast.
There were six of them. Two female and four male avatars, who looked nothing like any character design available in the game. Rather, they appeared as if they had used the portal to jump into the action from a completely different game. Their slim, graceful bodies and extravagant clothes would have fitted into a world such as Ultimate Fantasy XXVII.
While Kai’s mind tried to process what was going on, the newcomers didn’t waste any time. One of them stormed toward him. A girl. The most stunning one he had ever seen.
Kai knew how absurd this thought was the millisecond it entered his mind. He was about to get impaled, yet he had time to realize how breathtaking she was.
Slim and tall with long, delicate limbs, her unnaturally white, straight hair ended in black tips and flew behind her like wings as she sprinted toward him. She leaped forward, reaching behind her back. A sword appeared in her hand, so huge that she couldn’t possibly have carried it sheathed on her back.
She slid over the ground, swinging the sword in a way that would have been physically impossible in the real world. Mesmerized, Kai stared at her youthful face, which had the typical delicate features of an Ultimate Fantasy character. Her big eyes were like glowing amethysts and black lipstick covered her perfect lips.
Just before the claw could impale Kai, her sword cut through the massive spider leg as if through butter. The lower part dissolved into fragments, and a second later nothing indicated that it had ever been there. The arachnid staggered in slow motion. Only now did Kai see that the other members of his savior’s team had attacked the remaining legs of the giant spider.
The girl grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him with her, out of harm’s way, as the Guardian’s massive body began tumbling to the ground.
After dragging him a few feet, she let go of him and straightened up. Her eyes sparkled as she looked down on him.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” he heard her say in a soft, female voice.
Kai stared at her. She was a young woman in real life! Her graceful appearance could have been an avatar for a male player… if these guys were even players at all. He knew he would never forget that voice.
Then he realized that he must look like a total dork, staring at her, his body moving in slow motion.
“Thank you,” he said.
She smiled briefly, then turned her attention elsewhere and leaped away. Kai stared after her as she ran to her team. She w
as dressed in black and white, wearing a white top that left her belly open, shiny black pants and heavy boots. Black gloves covered her hands all the way up over the elbows. The oversized sword disappeared as she sheathed it behind her back.
With a shriek, the spider collapsed. The moment it hit the ground, it turned into pixels and then vanished as if it had never been there. The lag stopped as the FPS shot up to over 200.
Kai gasped for air. The low FPS rate had felt as if something heavy had been sitting on his chest.
Still lying on the ground, he looked around. Was it over? He noticed that the spiderlings, too, had disappeared, just before they would have overrun his friends.
His savior and her team were standing in the middle of the cave, remaining silent. Most likely they were communicating with each other over a private channel.
Who were these guys?
Kai had an idea but didn’t have time to think about that now.
A bone-shaking roar echoed through the cave as huge, hairy legs appeared behind the rock formation where the spider had shown up originally. A second later, it rose to its full height, hissing viciously. Its name tag and stats were golden, and it was at full health.
Shit, Kai thought. It’s reset!
And it was still invincible!
The group of strangers didn’t seem to be concerned about this, however. Completely calm, they stood at ease, looking at each other, communicating, while the black menace rose above them.
Then one of the guys turned around and addressed Kai’s party, whose members stared at them in speechless awe.
“Listen, everyone. Don’t move, don’t intervene, don’t panic. You’re safe now. We’ll handle this.”
“Who are you people?” Stan, who had fallen silent for a change, finally found his voice again.
A smug smile flashed over the man’s face. It was of almost ethereal beauty, framed by long, raven-black hair and with pitch-black eyes glowing like dark stars.
“We’re Cyber Squad.”
Cyber Squad - Level 1: A Gamelit/LitRPG Lite Cyberpunk Adventure Page 6
