Hell's Glitch (LitRPG): Into a Dark Adventure (5 page)

4 Hard Ass

Sam’s viewpoint went from looking directly at his character,
Sarem, to swiveling around to the back of him, then travelling inside his head
until Sarem and Sam were one.  It was like Sam had predicted, the simulation
was a first person one.

Sam looked down at his digital hands and noticed that he was
moving them.  It was initially a weird sensation, like he had never had hands
before in his life.  The ones he was looking at weren’t his—well—now they
were.  He flexed his long dark fingers and heard the crunch of the supple
leather when he balled his hand into a tight fist.  The leather felt good, and
so did the wind.  A nice breeze was blowing on a relatively quiet night.  There
were no manmade sounds to be heard, only the sounds of tiny forest creatures. 
There were actually tiny spiders and crickets moving around on the forest floor
seemingly alive in a nightly dance, just like in real life.

“This is sick!” Sam whispered to himself.

He couldn’t believe that such minute details were rendered
inside of the game.  It was almost indistinguishable from a real forest.  He
looked above, and through the trees could see some of the moon’s radiant glow. 
He wanted to see more, so he moved his feet for the first time.  It was another
funny sensation; a strange tingling travelled through his whole body.  He moved
to the middle of the clearing to look up at the gorgeous full moon.  It was a
much more beautiful sight than any moon he’d seen in real life.  The hugeness
of it, its purple tint, and the glow from it made it otherworldly and its mere
sight made Sam frightful, yet excited for the journey that was to come.  He let
out a shaky breath in an effort to calm himself, and thought about his next
plan of action.  He wasn’t just some mere player.  He still had a job to do. 
He had to remember to think of this like work, like every other game he’d playtested. 
At the moment, that seemed impossible, but he had to get over it.

He walked around in a circle to get accustomed to the
walking.  He stayed in the same area, so as not to rouse any enemies that might
be nearby, and talked to himself.

“So my method is the same as always.  I need to first find
the bug.  That requires extreme testing of the game’s systems or one of its
features.  I’ll need to even go outside the bounds of reason and explore every
inch of the game that I can.  I’ll have to test it and repeat the test to make
sure that it’s a repeatable flaw.  Either way, I’ll report what I find to the
developers.  They’ll check it out and let me know if they want me to test it
further.  Hopefully I can do this quickly and move on, so I can get five
glitches before anyone else.”

Sam was satisfied with his method.  He prepared to check his
gear when he heard a voice that didn’t fit with anything else he’d seen in this
world so far.  The liveliness of her voice broke his concentration and immersion
with the world.

“That’s a good method, tester number forty one ... Sam
Nagai, is it?”

The woman sounded young, maybe close to Sam’s twenty-seven
years as there was a hint of maturity in her tone.

“Who are you?” Sam asked.

“Oh sorry.  I’m one of the level designers for this area, the
Forest of Woe.  Fun fact: it’s also called the Assassin’s Forest by many of the
NPCs and Murderville by many of us on the design team.  My name is Alex Madura,”
she said, joviality in her tone.

“Nice to meet you, Alex.  So this is a Planes game?  The
character creation and even the name of this area makes me think it is.  Is it
a sequel or a remake?” he asked.

“Sorry, Sam, at this stage of the game I’m not authorized to
answer those kinds of questions.”

“That’s a bummer.  But it’s kind of obvious that this is
that same sort of game.”

“There’s no harm in you making whatever speculations you
want, Sam.  I just can’t confirm or deny them,” she said playfully.

“Fair enough, Alex.  I take it I’ll report whatever glitches
I find to you?”

“Yes and I apologize for taking you out of the game’s
atmosphere like this, but we do so early on to remind testers of their roles. 
As you can see, it’s easy to get lost in the game world and forget why you’re
even here.”

Sam chuckled at the obvious truth of that.

“You guys definitely know your game.  Well, thanks for the
reminder.”

“No need to thank me, Sam.  I know you already realized your
goal before I contacted you.  I heard you speak your plans for testing out
loud.  I’m only interrupting now to tell you my part in all this.  I think it
helps if we are on the same page as early as possible.  It’ll make the rest of
our communications go a lot smoother.”

The woman had really good reasoning, so Sam was all ears.

“So what’s your part?” he asked.

“Okay, so I’ll take it a step back and go over one of the
parts of your own testing method.  You actually don’t have to repeat any bugs
you find yourself.  Just report them as soon as you find them.  I’ll take a
look at the code, and if I think that it needs further testing I’ll let you
know.  And don’t worry, I’m a fast code reader.  If anything needs repeating,
I’ll know almost instantly.”

That was really good.  Sam counted his blessings that he got
a designer as efficient as Alex to report his bugs to.  Seems this contest had
a great element of luck involved too, since you didn’t know which designer
you’d have helping you.  Sam was sure that not all of them would be as good as
this Alex seemed to be.

“Glad I got you then, Alex.  Is there anything else?”

“Well, I’m getting to it, Sam.”

Sam chuckled again and fiddled through his various menu
options.

“Sorry.  Please continue, Alex.”

“There’s an extra menu just for you testers.  It’s called
Alpha Build.”

Sam was already browsing through it.

“What I need you to report to me is listed under Reports. 
What’s needed is self-explanatory.  After you send me a report and I check the
data, I run simulations myself.  If I can’t find the bugs on my own with the
data you gave me then I’ll have you repeat it in your build of the game.  If we
successfully repeat it on either my end or your end, we’ll officially list it
as a game bug.  With this current test, we won’t focus on fixing any of the
bugs.  We just want to discover them at this point, so find as many as you can.”

Sam smiled broadly.  He couldn’t have asked for a better
system.  He’d now be able to find a bug, report it, and simply move on instead
of being stuck trying to help the developers fix it.  This job would be fun
after all.

“That’s the plan, Alex!  Glad we’re on the same page now.”

“We definitely want the same thing, Sam—to make this game
the best it can be and to make sure you win this contest.  You can count on
me.  Good luck!”

The option to contact her was under Reports on the Alpha
Build menu.  The first level menu options were, Inventory—Equipment—Status—Game
Options—Alpha Build.  Sam selected his inventory to see the other items he came
with besides his gear.  The menu dropped down in front of him with images of his
items on a two-dimensional grid.  There was more here than was listed in the
character creation.  He already had a healing item called a Soul Fire that
could be used five times before emptying.  The portrait of the somewhat
translucent silver container made it look like bottled blue fire.  It even
danced with life as Sam stared at it.  He read its description.

Soul Fire

Heals HP

A mystical silver container able to hold the coveted
essence of human determination and will.  Has a restorative effect on those heavily
afflicted with the Phoenix’s curse.  Only those chosen few will find themselves
in possession of this item.

Along with that, he had some rings that increased his
resistances.  One increased his resistance to physical damage and the other
increased his resistance to magic.  He laughed at the names of each ring.

Beginner’s Gift of Survival

Increases physical defenses.

A starting gift for our first adventurous Full Divers. 
Don’t say we here at Full Core have never done anything for you ;-).

Beginner’s Gift of Persistence

Increases mystical defenses.

A starting gift for our first adventurous Full Divers. 
Do your best to get accustomed to the game.  Never give up!

“Oh wow!  They still made this easy mode for me.”

That didn’t stop him from using the rings.  He backed out of
the inventory and equipped the rings right away through the equipment menu. 
His weak defensive stats rose up to levels rivaling the other classes.  He
wondered if the other classes received the rings as well, but thought there
wouldn’t be a point in that.

“Maybe this character stole these items or something,” he
tried to reason.  He checked the manual to read up on the basics before he did
anything else.  Even the basics of the manual clocked in at over a hundred
pages.  The extra motions players could do in VR added a lot more complexity to
the game.  There were now special techniques that the character could perform
if Sam could mimic the right motions.  With Sam’s horrid level of bodily
coordination, he counted that as a current impossibility and stuck to the most
basic style of play.

“I can’t read all this.  I’ll just have to learn as I go.”

He hurriedly crammed some info about blocking, parrying,
roll dodging, and attacking.  He thought he understood the gist of it all, so
he closed his menu.  He didn’t want anyone beating him to that bonus, so he did
what any good adventurer would do and put one foot in front of the other.

The clearing provided a clear trail forward.  Sam hoped it
was the right direction.  There didn’t seem to be much but darkness in the
other direction.  The dark forest was spread out around him, obscuring all that
was within as long as he stood in the moon’s light.  He wondered if his eyes
would adjust to the dark, like in real life.  He needed to be ready for
whatever was inside.

He didn’t recognize this part of the game.  Well, he did
sort of recognize it, but he wasn’t supposed to be here so early in the game. 
In the original Death Planes game, you started off in a graveyard, so this
wasn’t a remake after all.  Maybe it was a sequel then.

The clearing’s path led back into the dark forest, but there
didn’t seem to be nowhere else to go, so Sam proceeded further in.

“Wait!  Is my dagger even equipped?”

He didn’t have anything in his hands and he saw nothing at
his sides, not even a scabbard., so he checked his equipment menu and found
nothing equipped to either hand slot.

“Trolls!” he yelled in anger.

He was mad that he didn’t notice it earlier when he was
putting on the rings.  He quickly equipped his Dagger to his right hand and the
Deflector shield to his left.  A scabbard for the Dagger appeared on his lower
back and his Deflector was always strapped to his left wrist as long as it was
equipped.  There was a slot for another weapon or shield on either hand slot,
making for a maximum of two slots to each hand.  You couldn’t equip all four
weapons or shields at the same time, but could switch between two of them in
each hand on the fly.  He made sure he had all his armor on as well.

After confirming that all his equipment was in its proper
place, he figured he was ready for combat.  The only issue he had was that his
tiny Deflector and naturally low defenses made blocking ineffective.  Even with
the extra protection from the ring, he’d be in a bad spot if he couldn’t dodge properly. 
He also needed to be quick and parry with his Deflector, so he wasn’t totally
defenseless.

“Why did I pick this class?  I’m going to get killed so hard
that my friends are going to throw me a funeral in real life,” he said, only
half joking.

He silently laughed at his own absurdity, mostly to calm his
nerves.  Then he proceeded forward and heard some footsteps other than his own. 
He stopped and hid behind a tree to see if he could find where the sound was
coming from.  His eyes were successfully adjusting to the dark, just not all
the way yet.  But the footsteps were growing louder.

I hope they didn’t see me.

They had probably seen him while he was in the moonlit
clearing, whoever or whatever it was.  He frantically searched around for
whoever was coming and found the silhouette behind him over his right hand
shoulder.  The thing seemed to be walking deeper into the forest and paying him
no attention.

He was stuck at a crossroads wondering what to do next.  The
smart thing to do would be to keep going and avoid whatever that thing was, but
that was also cowardly.  He hadn’t even seen what it looked like.  He had to at
least do that before he chickened out.

He crept through the trees without making a sound.  He had
to look down at his feet to make sure he had them.  The silent movement must’ve
been a Cutthroat class perk or maybe an ability that came from the equipment.  He
wasn’t sure since he hadn’t read any of the descriptions yet.

He used the silence to his advantage, closely stalking the
strange creature milling about through the forest.  A sliver of moonlight
peeked through a tiny opening in the canopy and the thing walked right under it
for a split second.  Sam saw thin and dark brown wooden flesh and elongated
branchlike limbs.  He only saw it from the back, where it was mostly covered in
dark purple leaves.  It was taller than most men, easily towering over Sam.

Well I’ve seen it now, time to move on?

The answer was no.  Now that he saw it, he had to kill it. 
That was the law in these types of games.  There was a chance that this thing
could later sneak up on him while he was fighting some other creature, or it
could even have some useful item that he needed.  It would definitely have
souls to drop, this game’s version of experience points.  He equipped his Dagger
by grabbing it from its scabbard and stalked forward.  The plant creature had
stopped near a tree and seemed to be doing nothing.  Sam, aka Sarem the
Sanguine, inched forward a little bit, then a little more.  The tree he waited
behind now was right next to the creature.