NOVEL NEXT Chapter 103 - Glitched
Looking at the flickering portal, he knew it was only moments before the next round of people came in. Gripping hold of Sentinel's Watch, he saw that it had 286 HP stored through the Absorb Life ability.
Triggering it consumed 155 of the pool and filled Sam's health. It was surprisingly unceremoniously done, no wave of warm light or anything, pop, full HP. The only thing he felt was a microdose of adrenaline, not even the same as being startled.
Sam wanted to stall for at least 20 seconds to let the Aura Barrier recharge back to full. Now checking it out, he noticed that he hadn't even put all the new Aura Points into it... The last time he gained Spirit, he must have forgotten it. Mending that, now upgraded it slightly, but it would still need time to charge up.
Fearing that the dea rogue would fade away if he didn't interact with him enough, he slammed a bunch of Psyhands on his stuff, all his weapons, any gear he could see and his armour, putting it into storage. It ended up looking weirder with a dead, almost naked man lying on the floor, but there wasn't much he could do about that now.
Like before, there was a final pulse of light that deposited his new audience in front of him. Two women, one man and three beasts. At the same time, the rogue corpse disappeared, giving Sam a slight smirk, having foreseen this already.
Connor, a Tower Shield Warrior, was clad in heavy armour and had similar defensive abilities as Liam before him. Julia, a duelist with two swords, much like Janik, her skills were mostly single-target skirmish and mobility-based. And Eliza, a Beastmaster which explained the beasts. Eliza looked surprisingly calm, wore furs and tribal-looking armour, and her skills were mostly supportive or boosting, especially for her beasts.
The three beasts consisted of a lean black furred, wolf-like creature, Frostmaw. A small drake with charred-orange scales and an almost purring gowl, Embercrest. And the last was an earth-toned feline with mossy fur and thick claws, Bramblepaw. They all had surprisingly logical skills to them, but since beastmasters tame monsters from Aetheria, it made a lot of sense for them to be built like Monsters.
All the players had the same shoulder or chest-mounted cameras as the ones before them had, but he wasn't going to bother with them now, as the group before them had already seen enough for people outside to figure out the basics.
"Welcome," Sam smiled at them with sarcasm in his voice.
"The fuck? It can talk?!" Connor, the shield warrior, asked, surprised.
"Ah... not this again..." Sam had only heard it once before, literally minutes before, and it was already getting old.
"Let's just rush this, shall we? Yes, I can talk, that's because I'm human, I don't wish to fight you, but that's not because I can't fight, it's just that I don't want to kill more players. You're probably going to ignore this and come at me like the last people did, so..."
"No, hold on. Wait." Julia, the duelist, added with a confused expression. "The Dungeon until now was filled with demons and shit, why are the boss a human... that speaks English?"
"Ah, so the rest of the dungeon is demon-focused, that's gotta be interesting compared to the rest of the Floor." Though Sam smiled at the end of his sentence, it was hollow.
"What, you didn't know?" Eliza, the beastmaster, asked, not seeming convinced.
"I suppose that's a good question, I haven't met many intelligent monsters, none in dungeons, so I never considered that," as he mused, he looked to the ceiling, setting up Triggered Manifest to make some shields to block any attack that might come his way.
"I just thought that the boss room was a separate thing, so you couldn't cheeze it from around a corner like the lower level Dungeons, but this raises some interesting questions."
"No, hold on. Why do you know these things?" Julia continued. "You're a Dungeon boss, right?" She looked hesitantly at her allies.
"I suppose, due to some shenanigans I am at the moment, yes, bu-" Sam's answer was interrupted by a pulse of aggression through Sentinel's Watch and the manifestation of two shields.
Sam could see in the corner of his eye that two of his thoughtform Psyhands had formed shields and blocked two incoming daggers, thrown by Julia. The daggers were easily redirected before the shields despawned.
"Fucking rude, here I'm answering your questions. I'm not even monologuing about my bullshit and you just attack." He sounded disappointed.
"You said you didn't want to fight, thought I'd make it easier for you." She gave him a weirdly satisfied smirk, as if she had succeeded in something special as she drew her swords properly.
Sighing deeply, Sam was less than amused. "Yes, I didn't want to fight, but that's not due to lack of ability."
Manifesting his full swarm, sans two hands that picked up her thrown daggers, they were both simple, non-trait 10dmg weapons. Right now, he has chosen to use them mainly for the threat factor.
This put the whole group on the defensive, where they seemed like they were on top a few seconds ago, the manifestation of over 100 weapons changed the dynamic from his casual passivist-like stance.
"I'll give you one chance to use the Emergency exit, or you die." He pointed at the duelist who threw her daggers at him, emphasising 'you'. Having already appraised her, he saw that she had the same Active Defence skill that Janik had taught Sam, as well as Dia.
Their tank placed itself between his ally and Sam, and the animals started spreading out.
"Yeah... I thought as much..." Sam sighed, he expected this, but hoped they would do it differently.
Dismissing his whole swarm for a brief moment, he became the sole focus of the group. This meant that they didn't have time to react as the very same swarm of weapons manifested behind his target and attacked. She didn't even get a chance to say anything or scream before a substantial pulse of blood left her body alongside her life. Static charge pulsed and hit the Tank, who took a little damage due to elemental resistance.
Noticing what happened, the others went into an aggressive stance right away. The beastmaster pointed at Sam, who had the three beast companions who were surrounding him, charge. He repeated the process by despawning and manifesting his Psyhands, splitting his swarm into three and instantly taking out the incoming creatures, static charge pulsed from each target, but didn't hit anyone else. He barely moved, and in the matter of seconds, four targets had fallen.
"You mother fucker!" Connor shouted as he charged Sam, who could only sigh.
Eliza ran to him and stopped him. "No, Connor, stop!"
"He fucking killed them. We need to-" Connor was slapped by Eliza, stopping his sentence and bringing him out of his rage.
"Connor, the combined damage was far over ten thousand... We... we have no chance." Eliza pleaded with facts and looked surprisingly more terrified at her statement than when Sam took out their friend and pets. "And he's letting us leave."
Connor took a moment, looked at Sam, then back at Eliza. Then he disappeared.
Eliza followed right after, leaving Sam alone yet again, this time with a duelist corpse in addition to three creatures.
Walking over to her, he intended to check what she had brought, but as the portal started flickering again, the corpses disappeared before he got a chance, as a new party landed.
Sam's expression soured. He ended up killing someone, sending others back with video evidence, and didn't even get shit from it.
Cursing to himself at this annoying situation, one of the people who had just landed.
"Wait, did it just speak?!"
Sam let out a long groan.
***
Sitting slumped in the throne, Sam looked at the corpse in front of him with tired, unfocused eyes. Deep dark lines under his eyes, eyelids that barely kept themselves open and a heavy breath. Surrounding him was a makeshift dome of translucent plates, overlapping to make a Thoughtform armoured casket.
Barely opening his mouth, he shoved in a sandwich, forcing himself to chew. This was followed by chugging almost an entire energy drink. He looked destroyed in a fatigue context. Mentally activating Triggered Manifest, he set it to keep the dome tight around him if he falls asleep.
[ Triggered manifest: When Player falls asleep, keep existing Thoughtform Psyhands in place. ]
He blinked when he saw the message, but his eyes didn't open. His sandwich fell into his lap, and he fell asleep.
"What the fuck?"
A voice woke him up with a jolt, the armoured casket remained in place as he looked around, trying to remember who he was for a few seconds before he remembered.
"Wake up, you ass. We're here to avenge the others!" A young man shouted, pointing his sword at Sam.
"Yeah, we know your tricks, we've seen the videos of you murdering the other Players!" A woman in a robe shouted next to him.
Sam's eyes were glazed over, he could barely see his targets. He was using 100 of his Psyhands to make the casket he was sitting in; he didn't trust the stone to protect him, after all.
This only left 32 hands for attacking outside of his little protective shell, but that attack would do more than 3000 damage anyway, so he felt fine about this.
As soon as the two people he could see took a step, he swiped his offensive swarm through them, his barely focused eyes missed the first target, then the second, but landed on the third attack, taking out the boy immediately. The woman seemed to run to him, shout something before she fumbled about, then disappear.
Sam didn't bother with anything and just closed his eyes.
***
Waking up to a surprising silence, he felt confused. Taking a moment to remember what was going on, he felt rested. His body aching was as though the throne had a pillow; it was a stone structure, but his mind was surprisingly well-rested.
Taking out his phone, he couldn't turn it on.
"Ah, figures..." he muttered to himself as he took out the Aether crystal he had dedicated to tool charging a while ago, and poked it against the charging input on the phone. The display lit up after a few seconds, and in the following half minute, a charging graphic filled up a bar before it turned on automatically.
Putting the crystal back in storage, he waited for the phone to wake up properly before checking the time and date. Raising a surprised eyebrow, he muttered to himself.
"Nine days?"
Considering taking stock of what he had, as he had just been stealing and looting things, focusing on food and drink, since he had started getting tired. He was interrupted by the flickering portal.
"Well, at least I got some rest this time," Sam muttered as he got up from the throne, stretching a moment as he dismissed the protective coffin.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
It didn't take more than a second before another party of five landed again. Sam sighed deeply, seeing another group geared to the teeth with murder, some of them covered in purple ichor with streaks of gold. Sam vaguely remembered having seen something like that before, but hadn't been mentally present enough to analyse it.
But, he didn't care much, he knew that people on the outside knew of the 'human boss' and wanted to fight him. Far too many lives had been ended by his Psyhands due to this knowledge, and he was to the point now that he was contemplating setting up a lawnmower of death in the arrival area. The main thing that stopped him was that enough people were fine with leaving, taking just arriving there as a success.
They were all in front of him, so anything they could do would come from there; even so, Sam was paranoid enough to assume teleportation or some shadow-step thing. He had already set up Triggered Manifest to spawn shields and protect him from incoming attacks if he didn't do so himself.
"I want to tell you to leave, but I guess you already know this part," Sam spoke through a sigh, it was deep, tired and bored. He manifested most of his swarm as he did so, leaving a few Psyhands left for Triggered Manifest to do its thing if needed.
"No, stop, wait!" One of the group shouted with his hands up in a defensive position.
This caused Sam to pause for a second. He expected a trap and prepared accordingly, a single move and the whole party would stop existing, but, based on what the others had said before about seeing the videos, he was certain they knew.
Sam had halfway stopped to Appraise the various Players that came in here, but decided to check out this man.
[ Mercer - Scout
Level: 61
STR: 14
DEX: 30
VIT: 18
SPT: 7
HP: 400 / 400
Damage: Quick Vein 406, Dagger: 520
Defence: 120
Abilities: HP Boon, VIT Boon, Quick Vein, Blurstep, Veilfield, Wall-Run, Razor Reflex, Perfect Invisibility, See Hidden ]
He had only one listed attack skill, and everything else was stealth or evasion-based.
The man took a few steps closer to Sam before turning around to the group. "It's OK, I got it from here."
"Are... are you sure?" the tankiest of the group asked hesitantly.
"Yes, I'm fine. If it goes bad, I'll just escape."
The group looked at him with severe hesitation in their eyes before they disappeared, like so many had done before them. Turning back, Sam got a better look at him.
Mercer was a wiry man with short brown hair, wearing simple-looking armour, and he only had a single dagger on his hip. His face was the type you'd either forget meeting or generic enough to be hard to pick out.
"I'm here with a message." Mercer smiled at Sam.
The tone Mercer used didn't sit right with Sam, it was too leading and vague.
"First, I want to warn you that I have an ally outside of the boss room, who can see my health, so if I suddenly die, he can leave the dungeon with that information." Mercer started walking around Sam in a surprisingly menacing way, it was clear he felt like he had the upper hand.
Sam just turned with him, he didn't feel like he liked where this was going.
"Now that explained, I feel the next part might feel a bit more... impactful," making a slight flair with his hand at the end, he continued his explanation. "My friends and I have found out who you are, probably not the only ones, but that's besides the point. I could go into the Tower Break and how it seems you have improved a lot over a short time, but that's not the focus here. The important bit is that we know of your little furry friend, the duelist and his kids... And, well, I'm sure you can tell where this is going." His smile was sadistic, his eyes had changed from the earlier messenger-like look to one thirsty for blood.
"If I kill you, your friends will know, leave and do things to them. If you leave without what you want, you'll do it yourself, I assume?" Sam felt surprisingly calm. He didn't know if this was a System thing or just his experience in PvP, or just his daily grinding, having him used to combat and danger.
Mercer pointed with his fingers at Sam with a pleased expression. "Right you are!" Chuckling a few times to himself, he continued after. "Now, your powers are unique, making it surprisingly easy to find. I appreciate the lack of a mask or hiding what you could do, but weapons showing up in the air and moving around, even in a split second, we'd have figured it out eventually."
Sam sighed. He felt stupid that he didn't cover his face, and he had the thought at first that he could manifest a weapon, attack and then dismiss it right after, but the cameras nowadays were rather high framerate, they'd probably figure it out eventually, unless he killed them all and... he didn't want that.
"What we... what I want is simple, I want you to let me kill you. Closing a Dungeon like this is always profitable, I might get some good XP and loot from you as well. Failing that, I'm sure your beast and... Janik, was it? Will provide some fun." His tone was nothing short of disgusting.
Sam thought about this for a moment, though Janik and Dia had a good chance to put up a fight against an organised group, the odds didn't look good. And that was before the kids were involved. If they knew about Dia and Janik, they knew about the kids. The only positive thing was that he didn't mention Elara.
Trying to find a way out of this was a problem; no matter what he could do, the man had covered his basics. Killing him would be easy, but his outside friends would find out and make good on their threat. If Sam tried to capture him, well, as long as he's awake and alive, he could use the Emergency Exit function... But he didn't want to just give up.
"Oh, I can see your mind churning, the cogs twisting, trying to find a way out of this," Mercer interjected into Sam's attempts. "But we're pretty well set, you have two choices. Aggression towards me and seeing them die if you ever get out of this, or accept your fate."
Even considering giving in to his demands was also a problem; what's stopping these people from killing his group even if he gives in? Sam pondered, read over his skills, looked into his ascendant abilities, checked his items, again and again. His new weapons, only the two daggers, were decent, but nothing was stopping the man from doing as he said. His armour, filled with stolen abilities, only increased survivability; nothing to stop the Emergency Exit or his friends from doing things.
He had nothing.
"So what do you say, you feel like getting this started?" The rogue smiled widely, having already won.
Sam's mind calmed, having analysed everything he thought he could do, nothing could stop his allies from noticing his death or stop him from leaving in any practical way. Knocking him out would also be temporary; the only chance he saw of this working was to submit and hope the others would be fine. He didn't want to, but... was this the only option?
"Tick, tock," Mercer chuckled. "If you take too long, I might get bored and just leave to find my entertainment elsewhere." He had a long and drawn-out tone.
Considering killing Mercer, Sam didn't know how long he'd be in here after that was done. If he got out instantly, he could do something about it, but if his exit was delayed by only an hour, everything could be over. He needed an out, something, anything.
Caught in his spiralling descent into madness in trying to find a way out of this, the sound of metal hitting something hard snapped him out of it. A dagger fell to the floor as two Thoughtorm shields hovered next to him. Triggered Manifest had activated.
"Oh, you're still trying to find a way out of this? I suppose I'll just have to use Emergency Escape and find my fun elsewhere." Again, his tone was nothing short of disgusting.
Sam surprised himself as his shields despawned, and his subconscious stopped defending. He understood why, but he didn't want it to go like this.
"Good, good," the man smiled. "Let's make this more interesting."
As soon as he completed his sentence, he vanished.
It wasn't the first time Sam had seen invisibility, but he was more surprised that Sentinel's Watch didn't notice him. Thinking back, Mercer had a skill: Perfect Invisibility. he read from the skill that this made him undetectable even from invisibility detection, so except for things like snow or gravel, there was no way to find him.
He considered just setting up a lawnmower defence around himself, but was that the right thing to do?
Feeling the sharp pain of being stabbed in the side,
[ Armour, Defence 260 has lowered the damage. ]
[ Barrier 0 / 175 ░░░░░░░░░░ ]
[ HP: 485 / 570 █████████░ ]
His stolen Defence value was doing its job, Sam wanted to defend himself, spiralling his daggers would be plenty, he could easily handle this without problems but...
Another attack, a cut to his thigh.
[ Armour, Defence 260 has lowered the damage. ]
[ HP: 225 / 570 ████░░░░░░ ]
One more attack would take care of it, he didn't even have to do anything; they would be safe, at least he hoped so. He wanted to fight back, but... could he? Would they be safe? Should he fight back and hope the System decides that this was the last fight?
Using several seconds trying to find a way out, he didn't want to give up, but if he defended himself, Mercer could just escape and do his thing. He needed to do something, but he couldn't.
The Barrier had barely started recharging, Mercer took his time, giving Sam the 20 seconds to recharge one tick of his barrier, giving it 8 HP to work with. It wouldn't do anything in Sam's case, but he could feel the next attack come; the Aura barrier around him was penetrated, and his body reacted before he could think about it. The dagger came for his neck, but a slight crouch and lean to the side had Mercer's blade miss.
Sam didn't intend to dodge, but as with most reactions, it was an involuntary response. Would Mercer think this is some defiance and leave? Did this little action doom Dia, Janik and his kids? Gods, he didn't hope so, but what choice did he have, right?
[ Ascendance system update ]
Sam instinctively opened the window and had a glance at it, reading the information. his solemn expression changed to an almost sadistic glee.
Triggering Sentinel's Watch's healing pool, consuming everything remaining, his expression changed!
[ HP: 512 / 570 █████████░ ]
In the same moment, a strange, glitched pulse of energy extended from around him, covering everything in the room for a split second in scintillating coloured energy that stuck to each surface, vibrating and changing shapes erratically for half a second before fading.
Sam's glee grew as he looked around the room like a predator looking for its prey.