Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure (14 page)

When all was said and done, he had only lost about a fifth
of his total HP which wasn’t bad at all.  She would have to catch him off guard
four more times to win at this rate.  Sam was in a lot of pain as he rose to
his feet, but he was grinning.  He knew that he had her now.  He only needed a
few powerful thrusts to take her out and he had a range advantage.  He could
poke at her with his Rapier from outside her parry range if he needed to, and
that’s what he did.

IMMORtAL_Kalika didn’t have many points invested in her HP. 
Sam landed two light pokes on her from behind his shield and took off a sixth
of her total health with each strike.  He had done more damage to her with two
easy attacks than she did with an opening blow which was supposed to be many
times stronger than basic attacks.

“You’re a little bit underleveled, aren’t you darling?”  Sam
wished that she could hear him.  “Don’t worry, I’ll finish you quick.  No need
to draw this out.”

Surprisingly, she went on the attack again and tried to
close the distance between the two of them as Sam backpedaled into the forest,
though she stopped abruptly in her tracks.  Sam briefly spared a glance behind
him and saw that there were enemies near him.  He was in spitting distance of
them.  It was two absurdly large and muscular brown bears, only they looked
ghoulish with eyes that glowed red against the backdrop of the dark forest
night.  Large swathes of their fur was completely missing and where their skin
was exposed, they had cracked gray patches covered with dried blood that looked
bloated and diseased.  He knew that since he was an encroaching Walker, that
the enemies wouldn’t react to him, but it looked like his opponent knew it too.

“Looks like a stalemate, Ms. Immortal.  What will you do, I
wonder?”

Sam smiled.  She was in a tough spot now.  The clear choice
to make would be to simply run away opposite the enemies.  Sam would follow, of
course, and they could continue their fight uninterrupted that way.  He watched
closely for the first sign of her running.  If he started running now, he might
be able to get to her and get a backstab as she turned and started running.

As if reading his very thoughts, IMMORtAL_Kalika ignored
conventional wisdom and charged right at Sam, aggroing (angering and
attracting) the nearby undead bears behind Sam.  They hulked forward, walking
right by him and towards his opponent.  Kalika split between them with a very
well timed roll, skipping their wide aggressive swipes altogether.

She landed in front of Sam and rolled again, this time
behind him.  Sam had the advantage this time though.  As she was still in the
middle of her roll, he quickly ran up behind her to attack.  She barely dodged
him with another quick roll forward.  Luckily Sam hadn’t attacked yet and was
able to keep his running momentum.  He was closer to her now than before and
quickly thrust his Rapier at her back.  He wasn’t close enough to get his
special backstab, but his light thrust did catch her for another sixth of her
health, leaving her with half her health.

Three more quick attacks would finish her, or one and a heavy
attack or better yet, a single well-timed charged attack.  He was still within
range of her and since he recovered quickly thanks to using a light attack, he
continued to follow right behind her.  She rolled again and he instantly
followed suit.

Strange.  Right before he went down for his own roll, he
noticed that she angled hers deeply to the right.  She had been running towards
the left the whole time and Sam had rolled in that direction where he assumed
she would be.  She recovered before he did and he saw that she had a good angle
at his back now.

As soon as he got to his feet, he attacked with his Sword
Uppercut to discourage her from backstabbing him, though he ended up missing
her completely.  Her strafing speed was faster than his own, if only by a
little and she rolled past the end of the quick upwards blow at the last minute. 
She was behind him in no time as Sam was forced to finish the rest of the Sword
Uppercut.  He had to rely on his other senses to track her now.  The only thing
he needed was his sense of touch, as she thrust something cold and sharp into
his lower back.

“Hrrgh!  Bastard ...”

Sam felt the girl’s foot press lightly against his back and
she gently pushed him off of her blade.  He fell to the ground face first.and as
his health faded, he made a realization.

“You were hiding your weapon the whole time.”

He looked up and saw her properly curtsy before rolling away
from the threat of approaching undead bears.  His view faded to black and he
again got the message:

You Have Been Vanquished.

This Kalika player was proving that she was actually
immortal.  More than that, she was insanely skilled.

15
Not a Madman

“Damn, I lost all that Quintessence!”

Sam was lamenting the fact that he never made it to his
Death Mark, which held eleven units of loose Quintessence.  By dying a second
time before collecting the contents of his Death Mark, he lost it all along
with the few souls he still had inside of it.  It was now replaced by his
second Death Mark at Kalika’s hands, which held nothing since he brashly went
back to fight her immediately instead of collecting his Death Mark near that
chasm he had fallen into the first time.

Sam decided to put all that behind him and encroach again,
only this time he didn’t get to encroach Kalika like he did the previous two
times.  He got another tester with a female avatar named CrushKills.  Sam had
run throughout the forest looking for her.  Like with Kalika, this was the
first time Sam had seen this tester’s username.  She was outfitted in the
default Knight’s set which was all dark metal that had a burnt and ashen
appearance to it from the breastplate to the boots.  It was small to match her
frame.  She didn’t wear the Knight’s helmet, instead opting to let her long
blond hair fall down her back in a long braid.  She seemed surprised when he
finally caught up to her, her green eyes were wide open and trained on his
ghostlike rippling form.  Sam was surprised to find her in her human form.  Her
flawless skin seemed to take on some sort of glow.  She was a gorgeous
character to look at, but was not a challenge in the least.  Sam easily parried
one of her blows and was able to repeatedly backstab her time and time again in
a vicious chain that she was unable to escape from.  Even her high defense and
protective armor couldn’t protect her.  Sam was easily awarded one thousand
souls, a loose unit of Quintessence, and a Bloody Tearstone.  He was however,
disappointed that he had no direct way to challenge IMMORtAL_Kalika again.  He
lost his desire to encroach other planes and opted to instead finish his single
player campaign, at least for now.

He left the Soul Beacon near where he met King Herke and
went through the Forest, killing first rosemen then some Forest Barkers.  After
defeating several of each enemy type and getting a drop (randomly generated
item) from one of the rosemen, called a Thorn Saber, he checked his inventory
and equipment again for anything that might give him an advantage during his
next encroachment.

“That Thorn Saber might just be what I need and maybe I can
use it with the muletta I got earlier,” he pondered aloud.

On his way to read and equip the Thorn Saber, he stumbled
across something funny about his other weapons.  Specifically, the Rapier.  It
now had a seemingly unique statistic that wasn’t present before, or at least he
hadn’t noticed it before.

Rapier

Thrusting Sword

ATK  105

     Weapon Damage 65

S ATK  D = 8

D ATK  C = 32

M ATK  F = 0

B ATK  F = 0

F RAT  0

L RAT  0

D RAT  0

P RAT  0

B RAT  4

Weight: 2.2lbs

S. ABS: 14,475

“S. ABS?  What the hell does that even mean?  Sword abs?”

That fourteen thousand four-hundred and seventy-five wasn’t
there before, in any case.  He was curious now, but he also didn’t want to
bother with the manual right now, so he contacted someone better.

He opened his Alpha Build menu and made his call.

“Yes, Sam?” asked Alex.

“Hey, Alex, what does S. ABS stand for?  It’s a value on my Rapier—oh,
it’s on my Dagger too!”

He examined the stats on his Dagger and remembered that the
S ABS value was there before.  He just hadn’t given any thought to what it
could be before, but it was growing at an exponential rate, whatever it was.

Dagger

Knife

ATK  46

     Weapon Damage  10

     S ATK  F = 0

     D ATK  B = 36

     M ATK  F = 0

B ATK  F = 0

F RAT  0

     L RAT  0

     D RAT  0

     P RAT  0

     B RAT  10

Weight: 1 lb

S ABS: 4000

“Sam, I’m not a manual you know,” she said admonishingly.

“I know, you’re better!  What better way to learn the game’s
systems than to ask one of the designers?”

“It’s also against the rules.  We’ve given you all you need
to learn the various systems inside the game, even a very detailed manual that
won’t be available to the players once the game is officially released.  It’s
also a massive waste of my time.”

“Okay, okay!  I got all that and I apologize for wasting
your time, Alex.  Buuuut ... since you’re already here, can you give me a quick
explanation?”

She huffed into her microphone very loudly so that Sam could
hear her frustration.

“You’re incorrigible, you know that?  This’ll be the last
time too.  Remember, you need me to report those glitches.  Please, make an
effort not to piss me off.”

He made a mental note of it.

“You got it, Alex.  You just caught me in a lazy moment.  It
won’t happen again.”

“Good, and sorry for going all Serious Sam on you.”

Sam chuckled at the classic game reference.

“Oh, I’ll have to use that one.”

“Pun well intended, Sam.  We’re all just doing a lot of work
here while you guys are playing.  I don’t mind helping you out, but that’s only
when you can’t fend for yourself, never before.  Okay, done lecturing now.  S.
ABS refers to soul absorption.  Every weapon has that value.  It’s a feature
unique to this project.”

Meaning it wasn’t in The Death Planes.

“Every weapon absorbs souls now?  What the hell for?” Sam
asked.

“Well it has a lot of cool applications.  In this game we
wanted the weapons to be more customizable so that each player makes a name for
themselves with their own legendary weapon.  So now the weapons absorb souls
separate from you at a thirty-three percent rate, so whatever weapon you equip
will always store a third of whatever souls you’re currently absorbing from the
enemies.”

“I hope that the weapon is getting stronger or something
with all those souls its taking.”

“Can you not see the usefulness in having a weapon that
stores souls?”

“Unless I can get them out of it, then no.”

“Then you lack imagination and a mind for strategy.  I can’t
help you more than that Sam.  You’ll have to figure it out yourself.  Report to
me the next time you run into something game breaking and not before.”

She severed the line.

“I wonder what crawled up her butt?” Sam dared to say out
loud.

He understood her frustration because she had a very
stressful job, but it had seemed to come out of nowhere.  Not long ago, they
were casually chatting it up and even then it was about something that Sam
could’ve figured out on his own.  What changed?  Well, if anything, she’d
convinced him to crack open his instruction manual.  He looked up the Soul
Absorption options for his weapons and saw that he could actually use those
souls to level his weapons up.  You couldn’t remove the souls from a weapon,
but you could make that weapon stronger if you took it to the right specialist
and tempered it with the right materials.  Sam wondered if there were any
specialists like that in this forest.  He wanted to test this game mechanic
first hand, it seemed pretty cool.  It appeared to encourage players to stick
with a certain weapon for a while and grow with it.  Sam had already loved his
Rapier, so he couldn’t see himself changing it anytime soon.

“I guess I’ll be sticking with the Rapier for a while.  And
yes, I’m smart enough to know that having a weapon that stores a third of my
souls in a game where you could lose all your souls at any time is an amazing
gameplay consideration.  Thank you very much, Full Core!”

He yelled that last part just for Alex, if she was
listening.  Having something always taking a third of his souls made the game
more difficult, but always having some souls available to level a weapon up
even when you died definitely made the game easier.  Sam wondered if it all balanced
itself out or if the difficulty fell to one side or the other.  Right now he
wasn’t sure and he was eager to get moving again.

“Maybe the merchant can level my blade up.”

He tossed that idea around in his head and quickly made his
way over to the cave.

******

Sam healed at the cave’s Soul Beacon and refilled his Soul
Fire.  He got up after that and walked around to the merchant who was still leaning
against the wall in his usual spot.

“Ready for a chat now are we?” the merchant asked as Sam
approached.  “Or is it items you’re looking for?”

He regarded Sam with a lazy half-smile and brown eyes filled
with humor.

“Both.  I’ll buy some items first,” Sam answered back.

“Great!  Have a look then, I got some new wares from a few
unlucky revenants.”

Sam’s digital menu opened up and he saw the merchant’s new
items immediately.  Along with the lackluster weapons and armors from before,
the merchant now sold some gear that was several times more useful.  Now he
sold a Flexile Wooden Bow to go with his Wooden Arrows.  The stats on the bow
were pretty bad, but at least it scaled with two of his stats.

Flexile Wooden Bow

Bow

A flexible bow often used by farmers chasing vermin.  Its
widespread popularity is due to its low cost, resilience, and reliability.  It’s
not rare to catch a thrifty adventurer using such a weapon.

ATK  58

     Weapon Damage  15

     S ATK  E = 15

     D ATK  D = 28

     M ATK  F = 0

     B ATK  F = 0

     F RAT  0

     L RAT  0

     D RAT  0

     P RAT  0

     B RAT  3

Weight: 1.6 lbs

Sam hurriedly bought both the bow and the arrows.  He only
bought fifty of the arrows to conserve some of his souls for other things such
as the Blank Map, which he still didn’t have enough souls to buy.  He ran out
of the shop and found the lone Forest Barker again.  Once the Forest Barkers
multiplied up to six, Sam used his Ignition Powder to kill the remaining ones
for good.  He returned to the cave merchant with a total of seven thousand,
five hundred souls.  He had enough to finally get what he wanted.  He first
bought the Blank Map for five thousand souls.  He hoped it would prove to be
worth it.

Blank Map

Fill in important destinations on your journey.

You could just as easily call this a blank vellum.  It is
simply a blank space for anyone to write anything.  By calling it a blank map,
adventurers define their intentions and thusly a major step in their journey is
undertaken.

It was literally what it said it was, a blank map with
absolutely nothing written on it.  Sam had a strong feeling that he had just
been trolled by the developers.  He went back to the merchant’s menu and saw an
item of interest called an Envoy Scriber.  Since he was in the spirit of
wasting money, he bought that as well and read its description.

Envoy Scriber

Send messages to other worlds.

One of the legendary writing tools crafted and enchanted
by the eminent linguist, scholar, and mage Letraym.  Letraym perfected these
tools after she made “first contact” with another world.  That world later
turned out to be a twin of her own, at least as she claimed it.  Letraym was
wroth to discover that language could not easily travel between worlds, so she
devised a method of powerful runes for such communication.

Now he could interact with other testers with the Envoy
Scriber.  He found that to be pretty neat.  He promised himself he’d mess with
it later.  For now, he busied himself with buying whatever herbs and bandages
he could afford from the merchant.  After he was done purchasing everything, he
was left with a paltry fifty souls.  With that he bought ten more arrows for
the hell of it.  He felt that he had all he’d need for now however.  Now done
with shopping, Sam closed the shop menu.

“Thank you for your patronage.”

The merchant beamed at Sam.  Sam nodded his head back at him.

“There is something different about you, traveler.  What is
it ... what is it?”  The merchant rubbed at the light stubble on his chin
creating a scratching sound in the quiet cave.

“I’ve gotten a lot stronger,” Sam answered back.

“You have, but it’s not enough to fend off those monsters. 
Make sure to continue avoiding them if you value your life.”

“I’ve already met the king and the forest killer, Caesar.”

The merchant seemed intrigued by this turn of events.

“And they didn’t tear you to bloody ribbons?  What kind of
fool do you take me for?”

“I ... was killed by Caesar, but he didn’t take my
quintessence like you said he would.  At least I don’t think he did.”

“He only likes pillaging the quintessence of strong
opponents.  The warriors hanging in his trees have had all their hopes and
dreams drained from them until all that’s left is hopelessness in their husked
out bodies.  They are so drained that there is nary even the tiniest speck of a
flame in their eyes.  Clearly you are nothing more than a pup, with slightly bigger
fangs than before.  Nothing for that killer to display.  Still, it’s incredible
that you’re here with your quintessence restored, even after death.  I wonder
how.”

Sam didn’t think it was necessary to tell the NPC about encroaching
on other testers, so he remained quiet.  He was annoyed at how the merchant
kept dismissing his strength.  He had at least challenged Caesar, even if he
was dispatched fairly easily.  It was more than this cave dwelling merchant
ever did.