Marksman Raidboss

“He he…” Troja seemed awfully cocky given that he and his zombie girls were captured by us. He certainly wasn’t the challenge we were expecting, but I kept my guard up in case he had another trick up his sleeve. “Looks like you’ve got a ticking timebomb in your group!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to sound aggressive to counter his upstart attitude. “Don’t play any tricks, Troja!”

I was halfway up to the access point by then, so despite my tone, I was worried he was going to try something while I was away.

“The trick’s already been pulled,” he said, looking at my group. “Take a look…”

There was a series of groans coming from behind me. Rose turned us around and we saw Davy was on his knees, holding his stomach like he was going to be sick. His body was twitching and snarling could be heard from him.

“Davy, what’s wrong?” Crow asked as he took a cautious step forward.

Crows chat was lighting up with shocked emojis, prayer hands and skulls. They were expecting the worst already, and I had a bad feeling about this too.

“Get…” Davy snarled. “Get back…”

Ginger took point and approached him with concern.

“Stop!” Crow ran between her and kept her from going closer. “Don’t go near him now, he’s turning!”

“Get outa’ me way! Turnin’ inta’ what, yee armoured land lubbin’ fruit?” Ginger eyes went wide and she fought to reach her first mate, denying the truth of his fate. “What’s happening to him?!” Once again Crow moved to intercept. It took all his strength to hold the pirate woman back. “Tell me what’s happening to me first mate!”

It was obvious what was going on with him. From his growls, to his skin fading to a grey color, he clearly had been bitten earlier and was starting to change into a zombie. But something was odd about him. This transformation was changing him a lot more than any of the other zombie glitched. His body was swelling in size, like new layers of strength were being added to him. A powerful, purple aura blazed around his body, accompanying the zombification and adding a violent layer to the change.

“He’s turning into a raid boss!” Tensei shouted as a large health bar appeared above him. “We have to save him, quickly!” she pointed up to the access point. “Mr. Roberts, you need to do something, and fast!”

“Rose! Run me to the access point!”

-Roger, Ray! o7-

There wasn’t much time to do this, if it was even possible at all. Rescuing him while he was transforming meant I needed to get access to his files, and I needed to do it quick.

By the time my fingers touched down on the keyboard, Davy was back up and hovering just above the ground, but a sliver of the loyal man we knew before. His clothing became dark and tattered, like some mythical entity lost at sea for years. His eyes were red and burning with hatred for the living. His muscles were twice the size of his previous slim figure.

The transformation we were looking at was part of our previous survival game. The zombies from there were created in order to make the perfect, augmented super soldiers, which backfired majorly in the lore. But Davy seemed to have been a successful variant of that program, which meant we were in for a real crazy battle.

His hands raised, each of the tips of his fingers were like the barrels of pirate pistols.

*BANG BANG BANG!*

Bullets ripped out like little cannons and struck everything around us. Everyone dove for cover except me, who needed to keep a particular pose to stay on the access point.

“Davy, cut this crap out, would’ya?” Ginger shouted as she held up Troja’s discarded armor as a shield. “Get back to yee senses, yee salty dog!”

He didn’t reply. Just stared at her coldly and aimed his finger guns her way.

Troja’s armor was strong, but those bullets were cracking through way too quickly. It lasted just long enough for Ginger to get up close and perform a non-lethal strike.

Davy was pushed back, but recovered and readied his ten finger guns for more blasting.

*BANG BANG BANG!*

Crow raised up a shield and took the shots. His armor held strong, but was taking on a lot of damage too.

The shield was shredded, but he managed to get a hit on the newly anointed raid boss with the flat side of his sword.

The glowing metal negated the viral flames of darkness around our former friend, but didn’t hurt him enough to mean much. If they wanted to stop him, they needed to get lethal. That was all to say if they could hit him again.

As he adjusted to his new found powers as a raid boss super soldier, his speed and strength increased. Ginger and Crow were both strong, but Davy was able to knock them prone a few times with punches and get some easy shots on them.

Meanwhile, while the fight raged, I was at the access point and found Davy’s files in the system. His code was odd, linked to a file deep in the core of the games engine. He’d said that he was born in this city, but he had no idea how true that was. In fact, every one of the advanced AI were linked to this very college tower. It was referred to as The Brain.

“What is this?”

I tried to dig deeper, but didn’t have access to it. Regardless, my friends were fighting with all they had to keep him subdued, so I needed to get to work and fix him already.

It didn’t take long for me to see what happened. The bite he’d received added a trojan program that carried the viral code that changed the Glitched into these monsters. I figured it would be as easy as simply deleting it, but it was connected to so many things that I had to sever all the connections first.

Davy’s aura exploded with power and he blasted into Ginger, who collided with a wall and almost broke through it. Her HP dropped to critical levels.

*RUMBLE!*

The tower shook violently a few moments after she was hit. The screen of the access point glitched a bit too. I thought it was just because she hit the wall hard, but that didn’t make sense.

Crow came in and used a healing spell on her, which got her back to her feet.

“Thanks, Crow.” Ginger said, spitting and stretching her arms to get back into the action.

“You are welcome. I hope that you feel as refreshed as I do whenever I drink Alps sparkling water. A natural mix of minerals and filtered water straight from mountain springs in Switserland...”

As he was trying to pay the bills, a shotgun blast of bullets hit his shield and caused it to crumble like peanut brittle.

-Maybe save the product placement for after the epic battle, Crow-boy?!-

“I was going to, but my contract is absolute…” Crow shrugged as he took cover with Ginger. “If I don’t do this, I don’t eat.”

“Yee has a ridiculous way o’ shillin’ fer’ money, tin head,” Ginger glared.

At least he was consistent.

The battle went on. Tensei kept an eye on Troja while also applying buffs to the team.

“Punch him good, punch him hard! Strike his block and break his guard!”

Her singing buffed their strength, giving their attacks a lot more power. But the problem was that Davy got the buff too, since the game still considered him part of the party. Once they saw the damage he was doing, they played it much more defensively.

“Holy crap. You people suck at this…” Malwaria said from her bird cage with a snicker in her tone.

“Sorry,” I scowled. “Not like we expected an ally to turn into a super zombie gunfighter.”

-Ignore her! Ray, please hurry! They won’t be able to hold him off for long!-

“I’m trying!”

In the mess of action, Crow and his glimmering light sword struck Davy in the back, both breaking his dark aura and stunning him with his zombie countering light ability.

Ginger had a very clear shot to strike Davy with her cutlass, but hesitated and nearly lost the window to hit.

-RAY! HURRY!-

Raid boss Davy’s aura grew twice the size as he slowly recovered, and there were a lot of crazy high pitch sounds that got louder by the second. It sounded like he was getting ready to explode and devastate the room and all of us in it.

I kept trying to fight the code which corrupted his core, but it kept coming back, like someone was quickly returning it.

Ginger had tears fall down her face. One good hit from her probably would have been enough to finish this raid boss off, but she knew it also meant her friend would be gone too.

“I-I…” she stuttered. “I don’ wanna’ do this…”

“I’m sorry, but this must be done!” Crow encouraged as he prepared his own weapon for a heavy strike. “It’s either us or him!”

“Finish it!” Davy shouted as he fought his own corruption. He even had a little smile. “Cap’n, there ain’t nobody I’d rather go down to than you.”

“Bu-but…”

“Yer’ the most beautiful bird i’d ever seen in me life. Great face, and yer booty ain't too bad neither.” He winked. “So if any’ a yah’ land lubbers ah’ gonna’ finish me, I’d want yer’ sword to do the werk.”

She was even more teary eyed. He’d reached through to her heart, and made it even more rough for her to do what she needed to.

-You can’t let her be the one to do this, Ray. Don’t let it be the end for him!-

I was having an incredibly hard time getting his code cleaned up, but a lucky opportunity struck like lightning. It was a gamble, but there weren’t any other options!

Ginger meanwhile was coming to terms with her lot, and raised her sword to deal the decisive blow against her now corrupted first mate.

But just as her sword came down, he completely vanished from sight upon my own command. All that remained was a sparkling purple dust that fell into a pile on the floor.

“Huh?” she looked my way. “What did…?”

-What did you just do?-

“Well, it’s kind of hard to explain…” I said as I took a deep breath. “This tower has a thing called The Brain in it, which seems to be an AI control center. All the advanced NPC we’ve seen are connected to it.”

“Like Ginger,” Tensei said.

“Yeah. Well, this place has an extremely large amount of storage for some reason. I’m talking about ridiculous numbers here that could probably power a small search engine. It had the capacity to hold his mind and body within it…”

He was now stuck in a digital limbo, almost as if he were trapped in stasis until we could find a proper way to rescue him from his infection. I couldn’t figure out why there was so much space in that drive, but it was plenty to hold him.

There were other things in that drive as well. They were called Nerouns, and there were exactly sixty of them. If I had to guess, these probably were the programs powering The Brain. Too bad I couldn’t check them out from here.

While I had the chance, I also released Malwaria, who was so happy to be free that she started kissing the ground next to the throne.

“Thank god I’m out of that cage!” She brushed her hair pompously and sat down in Troja’s throne. “That idiot wanted me to go on a date with him. As if… Maybe you people aren’t as useless as I thought you’d be. I suppose I should say thank you, but seeing me should be enough.”

-What an absolute *****-

I was thinking the same thing. This woman was insufferable already.

“Hey!” Malwaria leaned forward on the throne and glared at me. “I saw that chat! I am not a *****!”

Did the game just sensor her words too? Oh no… That was going to get some criticism from the fanbase.

“Malwaria, there’s no need to be rowdy with them,” Crow said. “We’re all just a bit tired from the fight, and wounded too.”

“Oh, whatever you say, simp…” she waved him off. “At least you and your chat helped me get here and all. You were a good boy while I needed you.”

“Simp? Why are you talking like this, Malwaria?” Crow asked.

I was so tempted to call her Miss. High and Mighty, but I held my tongue so we didn’t start a fight. As long as we won, and didn’t have too much trouble to clean up, I considered this a win.

With the help of his zombie women, Troja got free and was sneaking his skinny butt out of the throne room. When he got the the door, we spotted him and almost chased after, but something beat us to him-A pixelated cloud of shadow. It wafted into the room from several open windows like a fowl stench, only to swirl around the hacker.

“Wait, what is this? What’s going on?!”

He panicked and for a moment struggled to wave away the cloud, but it overwhelmed him and circled like a bubble of evil.

His body was completely trapped within. Seconds later the bubble shrank and phased into his chest.

“Ahhh! No! Spare me! Somebody help!”

A final shout left his mouth, then he fell silent and toppled over. His HP was depleted and even dropped into the negatives.

-What the heck just happened? (0_0)-

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It happened so quickly that we were all too stunned to react.

His strange condition didn’t end there, because he rose back up like the falling over animation rewinded back to its start. Then he dropped down all over again. It was a horrible cycle of dying that just kept repeating without end.

“The death loop…” My eyes went wide in horror.

This was the deathloop. A horrible bug that prevented a player from properly respawning, or logging out properly due to the game not properly hitting a game over screen. Troja had been forced into it by his own death.

The entity that had caused it flew from his body and coalesced into a humanoid shape. Slender and long, riddled with glitchy pixels and static. Black particles orbited around him like neutrons on an atom.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Malwaria said to the cloudy silhouette. “Thanks for dealing with that jerk for me. He was a real pain.”

It didn’t respond to her, just simply stood there and stared upwards toward the elevated throne. All the while its aura burned the floor below it.

There was no denying it at this point. What we were looking at was the whole reason we’d come to this world… This thing… It had to be…

“That’s The Virus!” Tensei declared in fear. “He’s here!”