Chapter 02 – Glitch
266 0 4
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

A vibrant orange haze filled the air as lava oozed down the fiery corpse filled mountain side.  Standing tall atop of the rocks were three figures.  They stood exhausted yet ready, basking in a momentary pause before they continued their entanglement.  The prize, the Lizard King Kazul, laid nearby bleeding out its life.  The great lizard’s golden blood pooled on the ground as they readied themselves 

This was the Solo Hunting gameplay mode tested in ALPHA, a part monster hunter and part survival game that usually ended in an epic battle royale. 

“The Kazul King is mine!” yelled Kai. 

He could not wait to say that line.  He had rehearsed it for weeks on end since he had never made it to the last fight of this game mode before.  He readied his sword and examined his foes.

“Do you have to say that like a noob?  Can’t we just fight silently till the end?” the annoyed Riley replied as she stood there twirling the glowing double bladed axe in her hands.  Her body, armor, and weapons all glowed with a hint of blue indicating that her buffs were still active.

“Oh, you guys are worms…”  replied Wuxia warrior An-Fei as his pearl-white, butterfly-laced, golden-trimmed wardrobe fluttered harmoniously with the wind.  

His odd kung fu stance, akin to some secret Wuxia fighting technique, gave both Kai and Riley some pause.  It just looked uncomfortable to them.  And unlike most games, the muscles exerted in the ALPHA reacted like they would in real life, so doing unnecessary physical movements just consumed your stamina.  This was the end of the death match, so saving unused energy was vital.

“Oh...wait a second, I didn’t hear that clearly.  Speak slowly please.  I should have said it like that? OK OK, I got it.”  mumbled An-Fei.

They knew he was talking with his viewers since An-Fei was a popular Chinese streamer.  He had over 20 million subscribers and was live streaming to millions around the world right now.

“You banana slugs!  All your bases belong to me!” yelled An-Fei.  

His smile grew as countless Trade Guild coins flooded his account.  Trade Guild coins were the game’s in-game currency and they could also be exchanged for real money.  An-Fei got paid for holding specific poses and yelling custom phrases and memes during his live streams.  He charged the most during the last fight in any battle royale event, so right now he was raking in the big bucks.  

No wonder he could afford that flashy outfit.

Kai was not a fan of the notorious side of live streaming.  An-Fei’s spoken words did not have any context to the match.  This was just the standard random stuff that would occasionally be spewed out by live streamers for their audience and it was annoying for the majority of gamers.  Though many gamers liked to watch streamers, most players hated playing with them due to this aspect.  Even hearing the occasional, “Mom I want to keep playing!  It’s not too late!  Don’t touch that! Noooooo!” yelled by many young gamers was less annoying.

Riley looked at Kai and said, “Don’t look like that, you are just being a hypocrite.”

“At least I only say words that are in context!”  

Kai responded quickly to hide his shame.  He was live streaming too, but he only had a few thousand subscribers and none of his subscribers had paid him to say or do anything.  Maybe they weren’t expecting too much from him.

“Not everyone has corporate sponsors like you.”

Riley ignored Kai’s protest.  She earned her sponsors.  She was a professional player that had already  won many Solo Hunting matches in ALPHA.  She knew how to take advantage of corporate America to fund her career ambitions and did not need charity from her millions of subscribers.  Though her avatar was a warrior, its exterior had the resemblance of a European soccer player.  Adorned on her armor, weapons and body were the slogans, symbols and colors of her numerous corporate sponsors.

An-Fei held another pose and readied for the final fight.  Kai noticed that he was low on mana, so he concluded that he had only one buff left to use.  He might have been able to use it to take out one of the two, but he did not have enough mana to take out both of them.  He needed some luck to come out on top in this situation, so he decided to play defensively and let his opponents start the fight.

Which of us is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly?

Kaboom!  Zoosh!

Suddenly he was hit with a blast of energy from two sides. Like a fly swatted unknowingly, both An-Fei and Riley released an energy attack on him.  The first from An-Fei broke through his protection buff, debuffing him, reducing some of his health points and knocking him down.  The second blast came not a second later from Riley, destroying just about all of his remaining health points and draining some mana points.  He became immobilized on the ground.  

How did I survive that?  

Though he was stunned by the outcome, Kai quickly began to analyze the two player attack.  He concluded that the attack by An-Fei coincidentally moved him out of the main driving force of Riley’s attack, it reduced the overall damage taken and avoided the insta-kill.  If not, he would be dead for sure.  His health was near zero and he couldn’t move at all.  He began to believe that the viewers at home must be laughing to no end.  Regardless, Kai could not believe his luck that he was somehow still in the match.  It was still possible for him to get second place.  He realized that a second place finish would boost his overall ranking in ALPHA which would increase his chances to move on to BETA.  BETA was the codename for the beta testing phase of the game.

“Tch” grumbled An-Fei.  

He thought the [Silent Shadow Viper Strike Fist of Death] attack would end Kai in one blow.  If Kai had not tripped on a rock during the attack he was sure it would have worked.  However he was still fine with how it ended since he was paid a hefty sum by a Chinese movie studio to use that specific Wuxia move during this match.  He believed that the attack was used in some way to promote their upcoming movie. 

An-Fei decided to deal with Kai after defeating Riley.  The results of the instream live poll that appeared in the corner of his HUD indicated that the vast majority of his viewers wanted to watch Chinese enterprise versus corporate America.  Chinese community solidarity versus American personal vanity.  East versus west.  4000 years of history versus 250 years of history.  Communist capitalism versus democratic capitalist systems.  

Neither player cared what the fight would be called, but what both players knew was that there was big money to be made.  They had met several times before, and each time it caused a social media storm, something that their subscribers, sponsors, and advertisers loved.

Riley had no blatant reaction to Kai.  She only took advantage of An-Fei’s attack to set up the 1v1 match with An-Fei.  If she used the opportunity to reach her goal, so be it.  She considered Kai a small footnote to the impending battle.  Nobody cared if Kai actually came in second place.  What players, viewers, and sponsors cared about was the results of the Riley versus An-Fei match.  This final battle was live streamed to millions of spectators across the world and would be talked about on esports channels, over Twitter threads, and beside office water coolers for the next few days.

Immediately they both started their attacks.  Brilliant flashes filled the air.

“Lotus Blossom Swirling Blade!” yelled An-Fei as he danced in the air avoiding Rileys blows.

An-Fei activated the [Lotus Blossom Swirling Blade] buff and created a storm of deadly silver-colored lotus blossoms that swirled in the air around him before flying towards Riley.

Riley jumped into the air and responded with, “Shadow Copy 3”.  Several clones of herself emerged from her shadow and took the blow created by An-Fei.  The failed attack and the shadow clones dispersed into the air while the ground shook.

Riley activated [Greater Axe Slash] buff as she yelled.  The axe in hand generated a wave of golden colored axes that flew at An-Fei.

An-Fei danced again and transitioned into a graceful Wuxia crane pose.  He closed his eyes, placed his palms together, and pushed out towards Riley as he verbally activated his defense buff.  

“Sky Mountain King’s Eternal Resolve”

He stood proudly as a mountain of crane feathers floating in air surrounded his body and shielded him from Riley’s attack.

They both kept moving, dancing and activating attack and defense buffs for several minutes.  The mountain side trembled and every spectrum of color filled the air as the residual from the continuous attacks exploded into fountains of colorful debris.

The viewers across the globe were fascinated.  This was the fight they wanted to see.  It was beautiful, extravagant, complex, and amazing.  Everyone was watching intensely, including Kai.

Then An-Fei and Riley stopped their attacks.  They both looked at each other cautiously while continuing to ignore the disabled Kai.

“Let’s end this in one glorious move!” shouted An-Fei. 

Kai was sure it was another highly paid request of his subs.  Normally he would drag out his flashy fight to make more money.

“Sure, let’s end it like a gunfight, cowboy style. We draw in a minute, OK?”

“Yes! A one strike martial challenge it is.”

“OK when the match timer hits 13:37:01 we attack.”  

Kai looked at the match timer and sighed.  He realized that An-Fei went for a meme moment to launch his final attack.  And he was sure Riley didn’t care about it either.

Riley then started her succinct chants and fast movements to step through the motions needed to create a powerful combination of complementary buffs.  She was building towards a flashy and devastating attack and her channeling time lasted for close to a minute.  She weaved through the complex series of moves where any single mistake would cause the combo to fail.  But she was a professional gamer, she knew she would not fail.  She was about to provide her many followers and corporate sponsors with one of the most spectacular 22 strike attack combos anyone had ever seen.  The attack was so devastating that in the future it was turned into a meme.

An-Fei on the other hand started to move in a grand and slightly exaggerated fashion.  He disabled the in-game translator to speak aloud in Mandarin as he chanted the phrases that would trigger his buffs leading to his attack.  Though non-Chinese viewers were provided with subtitles, they still cried as much of An-Fei’s poetic use of the casting phrases were lost in translation.  

Like many other games, a set of rhythmic words and phrases was needed to channel buffs.  However unlike most games, ALPHA allowed players to seamlessly blend colorful words and phrases into the activation sequence of a buff if the basic tempo of the activation was not broken.  And An-Fei mastered this technique.  He made buff activation into a new art form, into casting poetry.  This was one of the reasons why he was very popular during ALPHA, especially in Asia where most viewers appreciated the philosophy of One with Nature.  As he performed the grandiose and harmonious moves, beautiful wind swirls started to appear around him, and the vibrant colors of a seaside sunset filled the air.  Out of nowhere, Chinese classical music started to play in the background.

Kai was shocked.  He had seen grandiose buff activation sequences before, but what An-Fei’s complete ensemble included was a first for him.

Wow he even added background music to a channeling attack activation sequence!

Though Kai was amazed by An-Fei's creativity, he still had other things on his mind.  He had yet to give up.  He still wanted to win this match.  Amusingly, nobody seemed to sense Kai’s determination.  He had one slim chance and it was to use a rumored glitch.  There was a rumor of a deleted post in the ALPHA testers’ message board that described an attack boosting glitch found by accident.  The glitch was immediately patched since it could allegedly cause a player’s sensory limiter to overload, which may result in Neural Shock.

Rumor had it that if a player had exactly seven health points, activated the [Overcharge] buff, and cancelled the activation during the three second cast period, the resulting backlash would glitch the player into an ungodly [Overcharge] state which would cause the player’s next attack to have it’s damage amplified by a factor of 1000.  The patch fixed the glitch, so the risk of Neural Shock should be gone.  Since he had nothing to lose, he assumed the role of  a responsible ALPHA tester.  While carrying a big smile, Kai moved forward with his plan to validate the patch.

He had more than enough mana points to activate the [Overcharge] buff and invoke a simple sword attack buff [Area Blast] that would cause minimal AOE damage to his surrounding area.  Luckily, [Overcharge] could be activated by thought, and [Area Blast] just required the player to subtly say “Area Blast”, then proceed to strike their weapon to the ground.  The one minute delay gave him ample time to set up his attack.  He timed his buff activation sequence to coincide with the state of his health points as it automatically recovered back to seven.  He anxiously waited and readied his attack.  

The moment before An-Fei and Riley launched their attack, Kai began channelling [Overcharge].

An-Fei and Riley released their attacks at each other at the meme perfect game time of 13:37:01.  Kai, still prone on the ground, gently lifted his sword.  The motion disrupted his [Overcharge] activation he started a moment earlier, cancelling the buff and immediately triggering a backlash.  He felt slightly disoriented due to the effects of the backlash, but he also felt an immense surge of power far stronger than anything he felt before.  He felt powerful and continued to the next step.  At 13:37:02, as the blazing, powerful, and colorful attacks of An-Fei and Riley reached each other, Kai dropped the tip of his sword to the ground and whispered, “Area Blast.”  

The world became blindingly white followed by the unidentifiable sounds of something soulless tearing into the world.  Pain scorched out of Kai’s brain and breached into his back through his spinal cord, then the fire continued to burn throughout every nerve of his being.  He screamed in silence as nothing audible left his mouth.  In his delirium he noticed system messages glowing in red.

[ 0575 ]  WARN: Sensory Overload Detected

[ 0576 ]  WARN: Sensory Limiter Integrity Check In Progress

[ 0577 ]  WARN: Limiter Breach Detected

“What the hell!  Wasn’t this glitch patched?” Kai exclaimed as he was racked with pain. All of his senses suddenly became numb and a fog slowly creeped in. 

Am I dying?  I can’t die right? 

I feel tired...so tired...so sleepy.  

Odd things began appearing in his mind as his reasoning crumbled.  He caught the last few system messages in his visual field in his final glimpse of the game before his mind began to drift into silence.

[ 0578 ]  WARN: Safety Protocols Activated

[ 0579 ]  WARN: Ejecting Player

[ 0580 ]  WARN: Unknown Interference Detected

[ 0581 ]  ERROR: Failure in …

Kai lost consciousness.

4