ONESHOT : LEVEL 64
DAY 234 : B-DAY, SECONDWEEK, HORUS, YEAR 1
CENTRAL 24 : CENTRAL DISTRICT 6 : RESPAWN
God do I feel like an idiot.
Only a few days ago, my wife was bringing up the girl with the cheat-breathing and the vendetta against me. Not in those terms. It was mainly about her creepy boyfriend and how much of a creep he is.
But that’s hardly my business.
What is my business, is the fact that I knew she was in Central. I even knew she was going to that stupid match. Civetta was all like ‘she insisted he do something, that’s a sign she’s fighting back’ or whatever. She went on and on about it like there weren’t a thousand different shitheads pulling similar shit over the Admin’s heads. Just none involving any new arrival she’s assigned to.
So this one was special.
I get that. I even told her as much. And she dropped it. So did I.
That, as it turns out, was a mistake. As was assuming I wouldn’t teleport in while she was within sword-throwing distance of my waypoint.
But now here I am. Respawning and all.
Only there’s a biiig crowd waiting for me.
Alrighty then, Battle Mode Activate!
[ LEGENDARY TOGGLE ON: REACTIVE TELEPORT ]
Years ago, I edited my features to adjust a few things and make myself look more attractive. But I could never bring myself to commit suicide over it.
So, I credit the initial confusion at my appearance to the fact that I’m now a good deal hotter than I was yesterday.
At least I thought so based on the preview. That was over 10 years ago, so my memory of how I look isn’t perfect.
And how many since I last died? 30? More?
Thankfully, my wayward ambushers are initially confused long enough for me to teleport through the first brown katana someone throws at my elbow.
[ HP: 9,276/9,408 ]
Actually, no, it hit my elbow just fine. No debuff though.
Almost as soon as I put that together, I teleport across the street.
One of the eight eventually spots me and shoots before I realize that it’s gonna work too.
[ HP: 9,028/9,408 ]
Teleporting down the block, I see them before they see me.
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Getting a little closer to the guy who just shot me, I stab him with my signature Assassin’s Creed reference.
Except, what was an instakill only yesterday, deals exactly 1 damage.
Then 1 again exactly 1 second later.
And again.
So he shoots me likewise.
[ HP: 8,591/9,408 ]
What is happening right now?
Oh right… My gauntlet is gone… Fuck.
All eight land a hit before I get my shit together.
[ HP: 6,050/9,408 ]
Which happens just before I automatically teleport practically the next district over.
Buncha uppity Maxlevels…
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Cracking my neck, I punch the same guy with my free hand.
A red ‘5,039’ rises from his face as it explodes like a watermelon shot by a cannon into pavement.
He dies instantly. Not as instantly as I’d like, but I’ll take what I can get.
[ MYTHIC DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: MOD STONE ]
Hey, that’s like half a True Random right there. And they’ve all hit me by now, so…
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Punch.
[ EPIC DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: POWER ARMOR CHEST ]
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Punch, punch.
[ UNIQUE DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: DUAL DIAMOND DISCUS ]
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Kick.
[ MYTHIC DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: GJALLARHORN ]
Ooh, actually, that worked way better.
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
Kick.
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Nothing? He’s definitely dead… Oh right… He has a Vengeance Quest, I bet. Ah well…
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
“THIS!!!”
Kick.
[ UNIQUE DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: SOUL CALIBUR ]
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
“IS!!!”
Kick.
[ EPIC DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: AH-54 APACHE ]
[ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]
“SPARTA!!!”
Kick.
[ LEGENDARY DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: LEFT GRIEVE OF THE BERSERKER ]
All dead.
I’ll be the first to admit, I wasn’t quite as efficient as I could’ve been with that. They certainly peppered me full of holes while I took the time to yell.
Doing that without getting hit is harder than the girl makes it look…
[ HP: 2,819/9,408 ]
Even if I could’ve done that cleaner, it’s all the same in the end.
[ EPIC ACTION: FULL RESTORE ]
Got a couple Uniques there… And one of them’s a Soul Calibur. I was always more of a Soul Edge kind of guy myself, even if I do prefer the pretty blue corrupted holy look to the whole roiling-tentacle-eyeball mess. But a main is a main, and my main was Nightmare.
None of it makes up for what I lost, but that only makes sense.
Part of the VengeanceQuest reward calculation is based on how many times either player has killed the other. And it only goes up each time the favor isn’t returned. The reward tier only increases logarithmically though. That is to say, so slowly that you’d have to die thousands of times to reach the highest tier.
And then that Bitch went and did it anyway… I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.
But the more I think about it, the less I can even really complain. How many Vengeance Quests were going on me? Probably a lot, right? And she basically just cashed them in all at once… Didn’t invalidate the others, as demonstrated by that one guy just now. But there’s no way he would’ve gotten anything like what she did, even if his ganking squad actually pulled it off.
Not only did she get one of my best items, but it was one I had equipped.
Why the glove though? What does she even have that can benefit from any of that specifically?
Besides the Mod, I mean. A percentage STAT boost is quite literally unheard of.
Now that I think of it, she might just be the only one in the world with a Mod like that on any Equipment but an accessory…
Ah well. I have others. Even if I have to blow a few thousand True Random Mod Stones every time, I’ve been farming them for this very eventuality. Sure, I only manage to luck out on one every few years. But it’s not like I didn’t charge double. Triple? How many years did that cost her, anyway? And that XP Debt…
I still can’t believe she did it.
Yeah, I’m not happy about my X-Glove. But even I, of all people, have limits on how much of a Karen I’m willing to be about that kind of brute force method. She identified a weakness and taught me a valuable lesson about blah blah fucking blah. Okay, I am absolutely LIVID about the gauntlet.
But, even with only one every few years, I’ve been at it long enough to have a few other sets on standby.
[ MEDIUM ARMOR EQUIPPED: RIGHT GAUNTLET OF THE RED DRAGON EMPEROR ]
Hm… Damn it, like half the boosts are different. This nerfs me pretty hard, actually. Only in specific ways, but a hole in my offensive capability is still a hole that I can think of at least three people who would love to try and fill… With holes… Okay, that metaphor broke down pretty quick.
Point is, with my reputation, I kind of rely on being literally unstoppable. If I can’t back that up, this whole thing goes from heaven to hell for me real quick. And achieving that sort of literal unstoppability requires a precise balance of dozens upon dozens of different multipliers that combine in just the right way to counteract the side effects of the only reason I’m able to get away with any of this in the first place.
That is to say, my whole build’s stability is now royally fucked. And on top of that, I have to add in an immunity to Hold of all things to make sure some insta-spawning psychopath doesn’t chip-damage me to death while the world watches.
Because, like, I can’t just not travel. I’ve got places to be and shit. Or at least places to impose my presence on, despite the wishes of everyone there. Which is, to be fair, most places.
But I can maybe stick to the less public of my waypoints until I fix this whole thing…
Whatever, I’m going home.
[ EPIC ACTION: MANA OVERCLOCK ]
[ LEGENDARY ACTION: WAYPOINT TELEPORT ]
[ LEGENDARY TOGGLE OFF: REACTIVE TELEPORT ]
Teleporting to the waypoint next to my bed, I limply fall in.
A second later, my wife calls from the other room. “Hiii…”
I groan into my pillow. “Hiii…”
“Are you okaaay?”
“I gueeess…”
“You’re not mad?”
“At you? What? I mean no… Why would I be mad at you?”
“I didn’t save you when you were getting killed.”
“Wouldn’t that have gotten you fired?”
“What? For that? No. I don’t have any strikes.”
“But you would’ve gotten one if you helped?”
“Yeah…”
“Well, there you go. Not mad.”
“Even if the other Admins conspired against you?”
“I kind of expect them to at this point. But alright… How’d the angels fuck me over this time?”
“When someone respawns, we can’t just ‘materialize’ a new body. We can make one from scratch, but that takes time to generate. Not normally a problem, but when someone respawns thousands of times in the time it takes us to get one ready for them…”
I roll over and grab another pillow. “So it was a resource thing…”
“More or less. The resources are relatively infinite. Just not all at once. Blank human bodies are kept in stasis until the Instantaneous Respawn System attaches a soul. So when Jessie respawned over and over every few seconds, the IRS recalculated the most likely outcome, only to conclude that the city wasn’t scheduled for the supply of bodies required for the cycle to continue as long as it would… Did…”
She shakes her head. “Anyway, Jessie’s respawns would’ve been diverted to another district entirely if not for an Admin approving the System’s request to temporarily divert bodies destined to all areas with an excess of supply for their projected needs. Things like empty Rest Zones, sleepy towns, and other sorts of recently-abandoned areas that used to have sustained populations. All that excess supply was diverted just to keep your torture going”
I roll back over. “Oh… Sounds like business as usual. Am I supposed to be mad about that?”
“I thought you might be… If that request wasn’t approved, you wouldn’t have lost your special weeb glove.”
“I can hardly expect those jerks to take my feelings into account when… Wait, how did you know about the glove?”
“Every human Admin knows about that glove by now.”
“Oh… Well, that’s embarrassing.”
Civetta grimaces. “That same Admin maaay have also rerouted incoming respawns to an alternate Spawnpoint further from the arena.”
“Oh… That actually kinda helped me out, not gonna lie. Would’ve been harder to go on a killing spree of the same girl, if more people started showing up where she did.”
“Aaand another Admin may have interfered with dungeon drop rates to get Jessie a knife that could trap you in ‘Held’ status.”
“Now, I’m no weapon expert… But I distinctly remember an over-abundance of katanas, and a distinct lack of knives.”
“She kept grinding for the katana after she got the knife. The Admin in question may or may not have known about her practically religious zealotry for them. Or the fact that she’d unlock the ability to dual-wield them just a month later.”
I shrug further into the covers. “Sounds like the help was pretty incompetent, then.”
“They… May have massaged the drop rates after her first attempt… That dungeon doesn’t normally drop a weapon after every single clear.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah…”
“That it?”
“No…”
“Whatever… Goodnight.”
“It’s midday.”
I manage one more final shrug before I fall asleep anyway.