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MADMAN APOCALYPSE
Chapter -148

Chapter -148

William Twine nodded towards Steve and said, “Uh yeah, happy birthday.”

The Birthday Boy groaned. “We should get going, right? They’ll probably realize we’ve infiltrated their base pretty quickly, considering their ability to track Gambit wherever he goes.”

“They can’t actually do that anymore,” Panda told him. “I think what happened in the Safe Zone wasn’t because of him being tracked, but rather some automatic trigger reacting to his amoral nature and the whole being on the registry thing.”

The Twine brothers shared a suspicious glance with each other, before looking at me with disgust in their eyes.

Before I could defend myself, an achievement appeared in front of my face. The way everyone else seemed to pause made it clear that I wasn’t the only one to receive it.

Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x

‘GREAT GAME Deserter’

Found a way to avoid the mandatory GAME Events.

In hindsight, we should probably not have given sovereignty to the Hive Ship of the Child Protective Services, since it provides a pretty easy way to dodge the automatic summons of a GAME Event. Of course, if we revoked it, every single child would be pulled into the Event. That exact scenario is why sovereignty was given to the Hive Ship in the first place. Sometimes leniency really comes back to bite you in the ass though, but it’s too late to fix it, unless we wanted to start another Agency War.

Here’s the thing. We really meant it when we said that attendance is mandatory. Since the Second GAME Event has already begun without you, this means that you are no longer considered a Player. This puts you in the same category as Voidspawn and other vile bacteria that infect our well-oiled machine.

Trust me on this. We are not fucking around.

Reward: You have been marked for immediate execution

image [https://i.imgur.com/OvOehdY.png]

“What the hell does that mean!?” William exclaimed.

“We need to go,” Tina told me and pulled me towards the blast door.

William and Matthew started to argue about how stupid it was for them to have followed us up here, somehow both able to ignore Steve’s last command to get along.

Then came a message I had honestly been expecting for a long time.

WARNING!

Glitch-Hunter Task Force deploying to your area!

We know where you are.

You cannot hide.

Extermination imminent.

The two brothers stopped arguing.

“Run!” Panda yelled. Steve immediately took him up on the advice.

A sound like tearing fabric came from the far end of the chamber, furthest from the big blast door we were heading for. Then it was like the air itself was pulled open, creating a rift that a bulky beetle Agent stepped through. It was the same one that’d hunted Bee and I during the first Game Event.

With a roar, Matthew took off from the ground and flew towards the Glitch Hunter, while William drew his bow and started doing weird bounding movements as he fired off arrows.

“Let’s get the F out of here!” Steve insisted. He was holding a Looking Glass in his hand and shared the appraisal with me.

Level 85

‘#17’

Glitch Hunter x

“Glitch spotted. Extermination imminent.”

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Job: Glitch Hunter

Affiliation: Glitch-Hunter Task Force

While the Agents of the REPD generally handle System Subversion, they are not the upper echelon of those handling Glitches. Instead they are like the Local Police, whereas the Glitch Hunters are Federal. It’s not exactly the best comparison, but all you need to know is that these guys are fucking scary. They are called in for times when a major Subversion is suspected to happen or has already happened.

They are allowed to utilize system Skills that violate the system itself, which is quite ironic, but they function off of the “fight fire with fire” mentality. Whatever advantage you think you might have doesn’t exist.

You should probably run.

He is glad to be allowed to hunt you again.

image [https://i.imgur.com/EK3KpIA.png]

“I kind of want to try and kill him,” I said.

The Glitch Hunter’s thick carapace shimmered and all the arrows fired at him reflected right back at the Satyr, several of them burrowing deep into his torso and legs. As William tumbled to the ground, Steve repeatedly slammed on a button next to the large blast door to open it.

“Recursive.action(Beetle_Bolt),” the Hunter said, lifting his girthy right arm to shoot a ton of bolts at Matthew.

The Meatshield-turned-Red-Pawn absorbed several of the flechettes, before body-slamming the beetle into the ground with enough force to produce a loud crunch and releasing a violent crackle of red electricity. The beetle spasmed and fell still.

Matthew got up and tore the projectiles out of his sturdy body, before turning around and running back to his brother. William was no longer moving and dark-red blood pooled where he’d collapsed.

I watched in horror as the Glitch Hunter slowly got back to his feet.

“Oh no you fucking don’t,” I said.

I crouched and triggered SPRING_HEEL, then aimed my new gravity directly towards the Hunter’s torso.

Like a human-shaped rocket, I flew across the chamber, while pulling my fist back.

“Kapow!!” Brock squealed as I smashed him right into the Agent’s beetle head. I skidded to a halt and he turned around to shoot at me, but the 3 seconds passed before he could invoke his ability. His head was utterly obliterated in a mist of white blood.

Despite this guy being high-leveled and fucking scary, he still shared the same weakness as other beetles: impact damage. They wore their skeletons on the outsides of their bodies, so any force that could penetrate through that would devastate them.

“Holy shit!” Steve yelled from the door that he’d managed to get open.

However, the Glitch Hunters didn’t play fair. Already, his neck stump was beginning to rebuild itself into a head.

But I didn’t play fair either. The purple curse from Brock’s impact was spreading out along the beetle’s carapace and preventing the regenerative effects, but not fully.

I did the only thing I could think of and kept punching the headless body until there was nothing left but purple-stained mush.

The body glowed golden and seemed to be doing something similar to my original ‘Personal Rule’ passive that’d allowed me to cheat death once. The result was that the mush tried to take on a coherent shape, before Brock’s Anti-Heal effect kicked in and prevented it. This happened nine times in total, before finally the Glitch Hunter was truly dead.

Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x

‘Glitch-Hunter Hunter’

Defeated a Glitch Hunter.

You know, this isn’t meant to be possible. All Glitch Hunters have the very broken ‘Nine Lives’ passive that gives them the ability to cheat death nine times, not to mention the insane ‘Cockroach Constitution’ passive that imbues them with near-instantaneous regeneration.

Fortunately, there are more of these guys and we’ll be sending Glitch Hunters #11, #19, and #07 after you.

We are of course required to reward you for your astounding feat, but you won’t live long enough to enjoy it.

Reward: ‘Glitch Hunter Heart’

image [https://i.imgur.com/TbraA0T.png]

A squishy ridged black tube landed in my hands and I immediately inspected it.

‘Glitch Hunter Heart’ x

The heart of Glitch Hunter #17.

In order to steal his power, you must run blood through this heart and blow into it like an instrument. It’s what he would’ve wanted.

Weight: 1 Pandas

image [https://i.imgur.com/Rb6jDSX.png]

Then the air around me tore open and three new Glitch Hunters crawled out of their own personal rifts. Before they could fully materialize, I shot myself towards the open blast door using my Fuck Gravity and SPRING_HEEL. I made sure to grab Tina and Steve on the way out.

Outside the pod chamber was a large hallway connected to several other rooms with their own tube holes. Many of them also had open pods inside. It seemed they only closed up once ants or aphids were to be sent somewhere to the surface down below.

The hallway’s floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of the same strange papery material. All the doors were identical to the first, i.e. glossy-black space-ship-looking blast doors. Just like the chamber we’d entered through, it was absolutely sweltering here.

Even though the papery walls absorbed much of the sound, I could still hear Matthew fighting with the Glitch Hunters. However, it wasn’t my problem anymore. I’d already saved his life once, despite the fact that he’d robbed my dead body, so I didn’t owe him shit.

“They’ll follow you!” Steve complained, even though I was providing him the means to escape.

“They can’t track me,” I said confidently.

“You’re right,” Panda agreed, “But they can track Steve…”

“Ah, well shit.”

“Nina says we should take a left and head into the first Children’s Zone we see,” Tina announced. The direction matched the tug that I felt from my Manhunter’s Badge still locked onto Bee.

I didn’t need to be told twice, as the tearing sounds from nearby made it clear that the Glitch Hunters had dealt with the Twine brothers and were now coming for us.

Then suddenly a loud warning klaxon filled the hallway and no doubt all of the Hive Ship, although it was less like a normal alarm and more like unhinged banshee wailing. I wondered if it was the voice of the Hive’s Queen. Within seconds, ants flooded the large hallway, lending credence to my theory.

Instead of attempting to stop us where we flew by above, they instead honed in on the three bulky beetles. A fight immediately broke out and though the three Glitch Hunters fucked up the ants, they were so outnumbered that they were unlikely to survive for long.

“Good thing the Agencies hate each other,” Panda muttered in relief.

A fork in the hallway appeared and I took us left, continuing to ‘fall’ sideways through the air in the most peculiar approximation of flight imaginable. But hey, it worked.

“I’m proud of you Steve,” I said down to where the Birthday Boy dangled in my grip. “You didn’t scream once.”

Panda, who was standing on my horizontal torso looked down at the guy, before saying, “Gambit, he’s out cold.”

“Oh.”