There was no way I wanted him subjected to the [Horrors of the Night]. I had already had one [Verified Fan] being temporarily suspended for commenting on my situation. Even if they were a little creepy like a stan, I needed their support. I decided to address them directly.
‘So [Viewers] I’m gambling here with time. That fire I started will draw attention, will I be able to secure that NPC and turn him into a true [Player Killer]? Only time will tell, remember this is a kill and escape situation. I try and take out any police cars following me and the chances of losing the captured NPC are lower. Thanks for watching! This is [The Griefer] looking for minor plot corrections and suggestions.’ I said.
What was surprising to me was the fact that I’d not had many direct comments or discussions on my actions.
His state of confusion should last a little longer, I had overly promised the [Viewers] more than I ever had before. The concept of taking an NPC and turning it into a [Player Killer] wasn’t a new trick but the fact that it was me doing it, who was usually so low key would cover me a little.
I yanked open the side door of the pick up truck, the few small calibre bullets that had been inside my back were trying to push themselves out of my clothing as my body began to mend itself.
Standing still at a potential kill counted for the limited minor regeneration of the [Fright Night Mask] and I was thankful for it. Considering my options I grabbed hold of the young man in the drivers seat and pulled him forwards before slamming the door on his head a few times.
Blood ran from his broken nose and he was knocked into a semi-conscious state. If he hadn’t decided to chase me he could have stayed inside his own picket fence house with the older women doing whatever boring tasks the NPCs did indoors.
His light blonde hair and blue eyes made me mark him around the same age as Zen. I needed a quick kill but one with style. All comments from [Verified Viewers] were only accessible by [Management], the targetted [Player Killer] and the original sender.
For all I knew this could be someone deciding to mess with me and set me up for failure. They hadn’t promised me an ability, weapon or item but rather some vague gift.
I decided to make a minor spectacle of the young male NPC. I hefted him with with one hand and smashed him through the window of the side door of the pick-up truck. His face was bloodied all over by this point, cuts running down his face but he was completely unconscious.
The effect of hurting NPCs as a [Player Killer] varied depending on the location, at least in the [Contemporary Zone]. If I was inside a house, I could slice off an arm and watch them bleed out.
Standing in the middle of the road was a different effect. I wanted to make sure that any law enforcement or other NPCs who had been alerted to my presence on this street inside the [Contemporary Zone] would be distracted by the corpse.
This wasn’t a road designed for [Player Killers] like me like the [Hitch-Hiking Zone]. That place had been where I had met one of my mentors who had enabled me to get past my lack of willingness to kill or even hurt the NPCs.
I settled with slicing through his throat, rubbing my free hand in the blood and then stamping red handprints across the door of the truck. I dismissed my [Blooded Machete] out of existence temporarily while I reset the body of the young male NPC and arranged it back on the steering wheel and then punched the inside of the windscreen.
I received a message which appeared in my mind’s eye. I shoved it to the side while I finished setting the scene up in the truck. Thankfully the smoke had finished coming out of the bonnet and I tried the key in the ignition as I manoeuvred the dead corpse and shoved one foot down on a pedal.
The truck works. Which...is odd considering I literally just broke it. Someone is changing things.
Either a reward for my efforts or someone playing games with [Management] which made little sense to me. If the [Viewers] were the ones watching our performance and paying their subscription fees for the privilege then [Management] were the ones who controlled everything behind the scenes.
I was aware of rumours about so-called [Directors] who operated each [Zone] according to the whims of [Management] and the particular tastes of the audience but they were just that. Rumours.
Having to kill fake humans in interesting ways had taken a toll on my mental health but I had managed to stay sane but then how would I know if I had become entirely insane along the way? Hello? Can you hear me? Joking.
Either way, out of my realm of control. I needed to deal with the situation and get back to my younger brother Zen before he broke out of his NPC state of unconscious and chose to run.
The message came again just as I wiped the blood on my hands on my clothe. My long sleeve shirt, wool coat and jeans were beginning to look like I had butchered people or been in an accident.
There would be a few bullet holes in the back, but I wasn’t going to leave traces at the scene of killing. I wasn’t living up my [Player Name] but then again this was a whole different set of circumstances.
Pleased with the set up and aware of time limits, the scene of the young male driver with his slit throat slumped over the steering wheel of the truck was a decent effort. This time I chose to scroll through the message in my mind’s eye while I wondered what exactly I had done to deserve such a reward.
Yeah. That wasn’t normal. Management had never before banned one of my [Viewers] from commenting. The process of upgrading from invisible guest to [Visible Fans] or [Verified Fans] involved deciding they liked my performance as one of their trained actresses.
This was me drawing more attention in all the ways in which I exactly didn’t want. I only spoke to the [Viewers] to keep their attention, I had even thrown out a suggestion of visiting other [Zones] which I had only done once or twice.
I had never heard of any representatives of the management team nor had they given me encouraging messages. Something was seriously wrong here. Either the organisation which controlled this place had been hacked or...I didn’t know. I’d need to ask the old heads in the [Cut Zone] as soon as I made it out with Zen.
I stepped back from the pick up truck admiring my handiwork of bloody handprints across the windows and door and impacted glass where I had made it appear as though the driver had suddenly breaked the vehicle and had an accident.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
If I was by myself I could have even hidden myself around the truck or grabbed the base underneath and waited patiently for a passer-by or a member of the medical services to turn up and then kill them and take their own vehicle.
By choosing to rescue Zen I was limiting my own choices by a good margin. First, I needed to make sure that the second one or [Armed Vigilante] if that’s what the NPC was dead or in no way able to shoot at me again.
The one who had shot me twice was lying down in the middle of the road behind the smoking truck a little way off. She had been knocked off somehow when the younger male NPC hard hit the breaks. Or she had been shocked at the sight of me stabbing my weapon straight into the bonnet of the truck.
She’d probably expected me to go flying like a normal person would, my body didn’t experience shock in the same sensation but physical and mental injuries would accumulate.
My [Fright Night Mask] and role as [The Griefer] made me stronger than a normal human, faster and with greater physical and mental ability but I wasn’t invincible. Borrowed power wasn’t the same when you relied on simple boosts as gifts.
Didn’t mean that death stuck for me and I had been reborn a few times but that was more to my small slice of popularity wanted to see me return and try again.
Some of the old monsters living inside the different [Zones] were like that. Absolute superhuman freaks capable of way more than any standard human had any right to me. One of them in the [Hitch-Hiking Zone] was close to a level I supposed the rumours of those called [Directors] but he had been friendly to me and that was that.
The gun was close enough for her to grab but I knew the trap of that, nothing here was free or easy.
I’d been warned by plenty of the old and partially forgotten [Player Killers] in the [Cut Zone] that opportunities were to be created, not on offer. Granted that the older female NPC was an [Armed Vigilante] she could have a sidearm as well for use as a back up piece.
A half dozen bullets to the chest wouldn’t kill me immediately but it would slow me down enough that I could be taken out with blunt force, or I’d be distracted enough another threat could hit me.
I wanted to get back to Zen as soon as possible. Leaving him by the side for this long had been risky enough. I pulled one trick which was possible by using my [Player Killer] inventory, not something that I did too often because it cheapened the effect but in a pinch it replaced me having a long range weapon.
My [Blooded Machete] hadn’t had enough blood and flesh to fill an appetite which it needed. I shifted the body inside the truck which I had carefully placed slumped over the wheel and raised it in my hand while cutting deep enough to cut through clothing and flesh but not enough to go through bone.
The blade drank deep of the flesh and bone and I saw the dead body of the young male NPC shift a little as energy was drawn out and into the blade. I yanked it backwards and then threw it with all my enhanced strength at the still body of the unmoving older female NPC lying on her side on the asphalt of the road.
In the far distance more houses lit up lights as people woke up due to the noise but there was something else going on. I heard the explosion before I saw it as there was a cloud of smoke and a rush of air coming from next to one of the picket fence houses.
My [Blooded Machete] had been straight on target and sliced into the leg of the woman before sticking in place. I called it straight back into my [Player Killer] inventory where it sat there.
Too much blood and life energy being sucked up would put me into a killing mood and I needed more control than going on an insane rampage and turning people into sliced meat and tattered clothing.
My [Kill Count] was sufficient but another message popped up as soon as I had turned my back on the truck and saw Zen in the distance by the electrical substation chain fence. He was half-standing and half-bent over throwing up on the pavement in front of him.
His body was twitching but standing still as he arched his back and threw up once more on the ground, this time splattering it everywhere. He then stood still in place, legs shifting but he didn’t take a single step as he dropped like a puppet it’s strings cut.
My legs began moving before my brain kicked in gear as I ripped the [Fright Night Mask] off my face and also dismissed it into my inventory before I could stop myself.
I had purposefully avoided hurting Zen and made it to this point. I’d given up years in this place from my perspective to survive, satisfy [Viewers] and become an average if low-popularity [Player Killer].
Before the words I desperately wanted to call where ripped from my throat as I sprinted towards him my throat ached and my eyes itched as something inside my stomach rose up and caused me enough pain to double over.
I stumbled in my leather military style boots as my face smashed into the road surface a few metres from the truck. The impact caused a gash on my face as I was forced to place both free hands on my stomach to try and minimise the pain.
My voice ceased to work as the pain increased and I managed to push up onto my knees as my stomach forced me to throw up on the road in front of me much as Zen had.
A message came into my mind’s eye as blood from the gash dripped into my eyes and my tied up pony-tail in a bun loosened a little.
As long as I had been trapped inside the Belphus Horror Film festival I had never fallen sick, not once. No fever, no sign of any illness. This time my body was desperate to purge itself of something that was inside me, which had infected me. My eyes reddened as tears of blood dropped from them onto my bare face.
I was forced to see the message as it auto-scrolled in my mind’s eye. Behind me there was a scream from a human throat, feminine but raw. Far too raw to come from a civilised person. And it came from behind the truck. No.
No. No. No. Not this. Not when all I had to do was to grab Zen and then make it out of this place. We were close to the edge. There was no specific boundary as the road was in theory infinite but as long as you met guidelines then [Player Killers] and NPCs were allowed to leave.
After reading the message, I forced down the vomit which was trying to pour out of my throat and wiped my mouth. An alarm sounded out and lights appeared in the skies above.
There had been a horror cross-over and I was stuck inside this place as was Zen. And worse was that we had both been immediately infected.
I forced myself to speak. I took my white mask from my inventory, activated the neon lighting, did the same for my [Blooded Machete] as I raised it into the air and threw out my fist and screamed meaningless sound.
The [Fright Night Mask] got to work as I stood there as I spoke to whomever was watching this time.
‘We’re going to kill all the zombies. As many as we need and I’m going to take that NPC and turn him into an absolute monster. Sorry but [Silent Killer] is off the menu. We’re going to go full on rampage.
Then I was smashed into from behind as the risen body of the older woman with broken teeth and black veins across her skin, face and hands tried to bite into my clothing.
‘Here’s our first zombie kill of the day!’ I said as I flipped my body around and slammed the hilt of my [Blooded Machete] into the forehead of the infected older female NPC.
The body slumped to the ground once more but twitched on the asphalt of the road. This situation was going to get a whole lot worse and quick. I was stuck inside a massive viral outbreak situation.
‘Welcome to the . Please confirm your destination to your chosen Seed world or Variant of the planet Belphus.
All Visitors please register with your nearest available Tour Guide. The Tourism Board is Above All.’
[This has been a sponsored message from . Proud Sponsor of all Belphus produced content. Try one of our free festivals!]
Nicholas A. Ostheimer [Original Founder of the Tourism Board and Creator of Fictional Realities.]