Respawn: 18 and Up (Respawn LitRPG series Book 3) Page 16

  “Yeah.”

  “Some people accosted me outside. Asked about you. They’re looking for Rocky.”

  “And?”

  “I said you and I had been together a month now. That things were serious between us, and you couldn’t be the man they wanted. But I asked them a few questions, pretending to be helpful, and so I learned about your old nick and all that. You shouldn’t worry. Cheater’s not exactly a rare nickname. And they believed me since everyone here has known me for a while. Plus you aren’t exactly keeping yourself hidden. Good tactic, hiding in plain sight. Less suspicious.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you cover for me? We’re not friends, and those guys probably would have paid you well.”

  “We’re not friends, true, but we have been through a bit together. I would trust you to cover my back, but I’d never trust them. Plus, what’s the point in taking a few spores to hand over a man who pays by the thousand?”

  “So you want to blackmail me into more.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. See those guys in the arena? This battle is mid-tier. One thousand one hundred twenty-five spores to the one who dies. That’s not bad. At the lowest tiers, they only pay you double digits. But with you, I collected my take without losing a thing. Make sense? It’s more profitable to be friends with you than enemies. Plus, I hate those guys. They’re slippery.”

  “So why’d you demand I tell you about Kitty if you won, when you already knew?”

  “When somebody voluntarily reveals something dear to him, it boosts trust. So yes, I don’t mind having a friend who trusts me and counts spores by the thousand.”

  “It’s all about profit, then.”

  “Of course. You understand. So, why are you here?”

  “I have a hypothetical.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Let’s stay there’s this house. It’s got a hundred apartments in it. One of these has a photo album inside. On the front of the album, there’s a picture of a pair of little girls and a dog. Could your ability locate it?”

  “Do you have a description of the girls? Approximate age, clothing, that kind of thing? And what about the dog? Species, color, size, etc.”

  “Yes, all of those things.”

  “I could find it.”

  “Then I have some work for you.”

  “Another thousand? Nice! I haven’t even spent the first thousand yet.”

  “I don’t know exactly what the loot is. So let’s negotiate.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “We split everything we get on the way there, at the location, and on the way back in half. Minus expenses.”

  “What are the expenses?”

  “I have to get a few belts of ammo for the machine gun, and they’re pricey. Plus, I need to get a detailed map of the cluster, including house numbers. And other little things.”

  “And what if our take is zero?”

  “It won’t be, Tat, I promise. You know me. I don’t waste time.”

  “You still sound unsure.”

  “Well, there are exactly two options for what happens there. We’ll fill our pockets, or we’ll fill our graves.”

  Chapter 17

  Life Seven: Quest Monster

  Cheater pushed through the final roadblock, a bunch of furniture piled up on the stairs, and opened the grate without the slightest creak. He was on a roof again, as was his tradition.

  Inclining his head so the occasional drops of morning rain dodged his face, he walked to the corner, pulled the plastic bag from the chair he had looted from one of the top-floor apartments, and sat.

  “What’s the situation, Tat?”

  She looked up from the huge binoculars on their three-legged tripod, lowered her hood, and slowly shook her shaved head.

  “Nothing. The building is dead. Everything in this city is dead. Suspiciously dead. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Go on.”

  “Remember what we saw as we were driving? Ghouls. Thanks to them, we decided to enter town on foot instead of by vehicle. We had to eliminate a few on the way, quietly. But now, not a single one in sight. It’s like the whole area was nuked. Nothing alive, nothing moving. Since last night, we’ve been sitting up here, and we’ve seen nothing, not even on the thermal imager. Something is very wrong about this. And the clearest explanation is that there is a mighty elite here. One so powerful that even other elites keep their distance. Don’t believe me? Look off the other side of the roof. You’ll see right away that they all keep near half a mile away from this place. And we’re a good half-mile away from that building ourselves. Just imagine how scared a ghoul must be to stay a mile away!”

  “I get it.”

  “But now, I don’t know what to do. That elite has to eat something. It can’t just hang around in one building all day long. It needs a lot of food, in fact. Oh. Oh man. Oh dear God.”

  “What?”

  “Look, at the right-side entrance to the middle building. Look quick!”

  As he had looked for a site from which to monitor their target, Cheater had picked an unfinished twenty-story apartment building across the courtyard from the apartments. That building dominated all of the others, including the property they were aiming for. They could move around the roof or top floor without fear of being watched from above. After all, there was nothing worse than a long stakeout where you kept having to look over your shoulder.

  Cheater had assumed from the start that the stakeout would be a long one. He really did not want to lose another life, and when you were dealing with powerful infecteds, haste was the quickest road to respawn.

  They had spent all evening, night, and morning watching, and at last there was something.

  Cheater looked where Tat asked him to and nearly called out for Mommy himself. Even without binoculars. The creature had pushed out of the building. Its size was impressive even from this distances. Two tons, the man had said? No, it was much heavier, if his eyes were telling him the truth. And yet it moved with the agility of an Olympic sprinter, and as it flew across the ground, it looked around nimbly, missing nothing.

  “Get down or he might notice you!” Tat hissed at him.

  Her inability to speak in anything but a whisper proved how terrified she really was. Or else she didn’t know that the monster couldn’t possibly hear them from that distance—their hearing wasn’t that developed. But Cheater knew he should hide. If the elite came within a couple of hundred yards, there was a high chance it would notice a novice.

  One of immunes’ bonus stats, Stealth, played a great role in their lives. It determined a player’s chance of being detected by the enemy. People, NPCs, and monsters all had their own stats, and their actions pumped them and leveled them up. The System ran calculations during interactions to determine the possible outcomes. A small difference could cross the border between life and death.

  Cheater was a newcomer. His Stealth had reached a modest 12. Players like him were noticed by the more serious monsters if they dared to so much as peek out from behind cover. Not everything was hopeless, though—at a great distance, even a level zero could stay hidden, but Tat was right. There was no point in taking any chances. The monster was actively craning its neck this way and that. It might look up at the roof, and it could certainly climb up to it if it so desired.

  More developed monsters had stronger Intellect, too. Just like more developed players did.

  But sitting there without being able to see anything was boring. “What’s going on?” he whispered.

  “It ran through the parking lot and disappeared behind the mall. I don’t know where it is now. Cheater, it’s colossal. I’ve never seen anything as big as that in person. Only in a video once. What do we do?”

  “The obvious. We kill it and get the album.”

  “Very funny.”

  “OK, what do you suggest? Rushing over to grab the album while it’s gone? You yourself said your ability is short-range
only and doesn’t let you work very quickly. How long will it take you to search those buildings? Two hours? Three? Four? Ten? And that bastard might return any moment. So we have to kill it.”

  “You’ve forgotten our levels, haven’t you? I’m just a 17, and you’re an 11. If this is a joke, it isn’t funny.”

  Cheater hastily weighed the pros and cons of his answer.

  “I’ve killed an elite before. On my own. With you, it’ll be even easier.”

  “Uh-huh. Yeah, I’m sure. A whole crowd of elites, wasn’t it? While you were tied up?”

  “Where do you think I got that bag of loot from?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s no way I’m believing you killed an elite on your own.”

  “Let’s bet your share on it, then. I’ll kill the elite.”

  “How will I collect my share if I win the bet, you’re dead, and the elite’s alive?”

  “Yeah, never mind.”

  “This thing is at least level 62. I thought it would be weaker. There’s nothing we can do against a monster like that, Cheater.”

  “Well, you sure are stubborn. Fine, I’ll kill it myself. As long as you’ll help me find the album after that.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wait, shh! It’s coming back. Pulling something along with it. Oh yeah, it’s a raffler. The elite just hung its meal on its thorns like a hedgehog bringing a burger home. It looks satisfied.”

  “Lunch time, I guess.”

  “This thing eats rafflers. What a behemoth. Listen, Cheater, if you did kill an elite, tell me how you did it. We’re in this together, so quit equivocating.”

  “The first one was with a rifle, the second with that machine gun.”

  “Whoa, two elites? OK, now I know you’re lying. Is that your ability? Bad lying? Look, elites’ armor is so good that even RPGs and cannons aren’t always fatal.”

  “I hit the first one from behind, in the sporesac.”

  “More lies. They have armor protecting their sporesacs from the back.”

  “Not from below. The elite bent over. That’s when I took the shot.”

  “Those things can see you even if you’re behind them, even as far as fifty yards away.”

  “I was farther away than that.”

  “And you hit it? Are your hands immune to trembling?”

  “They were too scared to tremble.”

  “Now that, I believe. What about the second elite? Did you wait for him to flash his ass too? Sheesh. I’d better think twice before turning my back to you again.”

  “I wounded the second with a grenade launcher and finished him off with a machine gun. The one that was in the pickup.”

  “Nope. Isn’t armor piercing.”

  “Ah, but there you’re forgetting something. It doesn’t pierce armor, but the bullets can weaken the armor plating. It started chipping and cracking. If you hit the same place again and again, damage only grows. After several bullets, the spot’s protection is eliminated. I’m a good shooter, and the elite was close.”

  “High-level players shoot better than you, and they still can’t do that.”

  “I can do it.”

  “It’s an immune ability, isn’t it?”

  “Think whatever you want. In fact, think while you’re waiting here, while I go kill that thing.”

  “Wait. If you can do this on your own, why do you need me? You said things would be easier with me.”

  “Yeah, they will. But it’s a risk for you.”

  “You’ve been honest with me, so I’ll be honest too. I was hired for half the loot, and sitting on the sideline is a crappy thing to do. So tell me: What’s the plan?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  * * *

  Cheater had begun preparing for the fight back at Pyramid, stocking up on the necessary items. The NPC had lent him a rifle, once he left a substantial amount as collateral. It was an old, improved weapon. A modification on the weapon gave a small increase to muzzle velocity. This boosted both accuracy and penetration, which were not bad boosts to have when facing an elite.

  It was the kind of rifle they used to attack the Wehrmacht tanks in World War II. A simple weapon, with immense weight and stopping power. It was cheaper than the best of its class, but not much, and the modification it had was a useful one. If Cheater failed to return it and thus lost his deposit, it would be a serious hit to his finances.

  The rifle sat on a table, its long barrel’s muzzle brake reaching out over the roof’s edge. Cheater himself was in an uncomfortable chair that he had hardly been able to fit through the narrow door. He watched as Titty Tat wandered around the wasteland halfway between him and the houses of despair. The girl twirled in place, kicking all sorts of garbage around, sometimes bending down for some reason, and whistling all the time. He couldn’t hear the music from his distance, but the shape of her lips left no room for doubt.

  The elite’s hearing was better. It should hear her. But ten minutes later, the creature had still not emerged.

  Had it decided that the raffler was enough for today? No way. And this was a ghoul, so it had an irrepressible instinct to kill any immune. It was a law of the Continent, and no law of the Continent could be broken.

  So what was going on? Did it have something to do with the fact that this was no ordinary ghoul, but a ghoul linked to a quest? Perhaps the System had established some unknown rules that demanded the ghoul not attack the people in the vicinity of the building it guarded under any circumstance.

  What could they do, then? Enter its domain? Sure, but what then? That would kill Cheater’s only advantage, which was distance.

  Titty Tat couldn’t take it anymore and came in over the radio. “Hey, Cheater, did you get any message about the local elite being deaf?

  It looks like your plan isn’t just dumb, it’s a dud. Shit!”

  She leaped away from the colossus that appeared out of nowhere. They had seen no sign of it. It just appeared, a hundred and fifty yards away from the girl. At first, she just ran haphazardly, but she quickly regained she wits and headed straight for Cheater’s position.

  This elite had a special ability. Camouflage. Sometimes, elites had abilities much like immunes’.

  The plan had worked. Not quite the way they had hoped, but it had worked.

  Though whether it would succeed, well, that was a different story.

  Cheater took aim. The gun’s sight was old and simple, only four times magnification, but as reliable as a hammer and with a decent field of view. The elite was dangerous for more reasons than just its armor. Highly-developed creatures had a number of other qualities, too. Despite their size, their maneuverability and speed was impossibly good. Shooting them in motion was quite a challenge. But Titty Tat simplified his task by running in a straight line. The creature rushed directly at her—directly along the line of Cheater’s barrel. No lead time necessary, and the day was nearly free of wind. The target neither juked nor bobbed.

  But as he looked at the monster, Cheater nearly changed his mind and declined to shoot. The beast was so terrifying it almost hurt. It took up nearly his entire field of view. That was an exaggeration, of course—fear has eyes the size of watermelons—but not by much.

  He breathed out calmly, and made his crucial move: activating Smile of Fortune. Cheater had filled Titty Tat’s ears with exultation of his great skill at shooting, but he had said nothing about this skill. He had also failed to mention that this was the skill that he used to take out the second elite.

  Luck was his only hope here. Shooting bullet after bullet at one and the same point hundreds of yards away was no deed for Accuracy alone. Even the perfect shooter would miss, not because of his error, but because of the unpredictable bloom of the gun.

  The rifle kicked into his shoulder like the hoof of an enraged stallion. Cheater nearly flew backwards, along with his chair, and praised his choice to build a heavy barricade behind him out of everything he could find. Th
e rifle was semi-automatic, so there was no need to reach for the bolt. He managed to shoot twice more before the bright colors of the world colored by Smile of Fortune lost their saturation to normalcy once more.

  His supernatural luck took its break for the day. Now, only Accuracy would help him.

  The creature was still alive, despite taking three bullets within as many seconds to a triangular plate at the base of its neck. Cheater had been using the most expensive bullets, the hardest bullets to find: tungsten carbide core, with maximum armor penetration.

  His Luck had failed him, or something else had gone wrong. The elite didn’t crash to its death with this blow to a vital part of its body—it merely bent down, and then swayed, stunned, from side to side, as if a giant sledgehammer had just crashed into its skull. Either it didn’t know which way to fall, or it was returning to its senses. The monster’s movements hurt his chances of hitting, since they were exaggerated and perpendicular to his line of fire. But he had no choice. He fired the final two bullets, aiming at the same place, and began to hastily reload.

  There was only one more magazine—the merchant hadn’t had any more in stock. Cheater had thought the fight would be over by now. This was an elite, after all. When you face an elite, you either win fast, or death comes to you before you can use up all your ammo.

  He took aimed again. While he had been reloading, the monster had stopped rocking and was now shaking its head and raking the ground with its foreclaws for some unknown reason, sending huge clumps of earth flying back behind it. It had dug two pits already.

  Thankfully it was no longer swaying. Cheater aimed at the same place again and pulled the trigger. The cruel recoil punched into his shoulder again, and the beast finally fell. It kept twitching in an awkward pose, one in which Cheater could no longer see his target area, nor the sporesac. Even at this angle, though, he had to try. The armor he could see was thinner than other places...

  What the hell?

  Instead of continuing to flee, Titty Tat was returning to the scene, circling around the still-living (and thus perilously dangerous) monster.