Chapter 142: Sharks and Birds Against the Abyss Part 1
Chapter 142: Sharks and Birds Against the Abyss Part 1
Memories equal experience. Experience equals power.
There is this game called “Cosmo Buster”, an FPS that even in terms of Full-Dive MMOs is fairly old, even older than Sh*t Chronicles Online, and its main selling point was a phrase that went something like “Feel the overwhelming despair with your whole body!”. And the feeling of overwhelming despair that I got from playing that game arose inside of me right now…… Seeing hordes of fish enemies charging right at me from every direction possible.
What was so infuriating about that game was the fact that apparently the developers did not understand the difference between “controlling your avatar with a controller” and “controlling your avatar with your own body movements”. It was a fairly common misconception in the early days of VR games. Inside a Full-Dive game, instead of just tilting a stick in a certain direction, you must move your own body in order to perform a specific action. Therefore, adjusting the controls in a Full-Dive environment was completely different from your typical games. In the beginning of VR era, it was precisely because of that reason that so many games managed to fall from greatness right into the cesspool known as the sh*tty games.
「Fucking hell, I never would have thought that I would miss a mini-map function as much as I’m missing it now……!」
This current situation was pretty nostalgic to me in a sense, because it reminded me of one of the mission from Cosmo Buster’s endgame phase. This mission was called “The Allied Army’s Withdrawal Battle”. Sexual misconduct, monsters, artillery flying through the air, brain-hungry lizardmen…… will any of those elements be present in here as well? It was a true hell on earth, but right about now I was hoping that the experience I amassed during doing that mission over and over again would come in handy.
The conclusion that I arrived at during the “Allied Army’s Withdrawal Battle” was that fighting was not the optimal solution for victory…… The reason for that being that the “mission failed” condition was only the player’s death, and the points of evaluation were “time” and “kill score”. There was no condition that applied to how many of the allied soldiers could die during the mission. But even upon realizing that, it took me considerable amount of time and effort to actually achieve an S rank on that particular mission…… What I want to say here is, this is more of a mission where you must display just how long can you actually go on without suffering injuries yourself.
「In Cosmo Buster you couldn’t climb up walls because of bugs and all that, but in this game this is hardly the problem!」
I launch Zero Gravity, Flip Float and Skywalker. Having gained maximum mobility possible from this, I started to run up the pile of rubble, then up the wall, kick it and jump in mid-air, only to land on the roof of the nearest house. In Cosmo Buster, if you wanted to escape from the enemies you had to do it vertically if horizontally it was impossible, but…… Looks like this game wasn’t going to let me have my way so easily.
「How come that monsters who aren’t even humanoid can move so smoothly!?」
The monsters started to pile up like dust, eventually creating a mountain that other monsters started to use like a stepping stones. They repeat that process enough time to eventually create a mountain of rotten bodies that reached all the way towards the roof. Some percentage of the mob was depleted that way and even blocked to road to some extent, but the others were not chasing me relentlessly. Freedom of action could go both way in this game, and it was my fault for forgetting about that fact.
「But this is actually more convenient for me!」
It seems that those who blindly chase after me are not nearly as flexible as the other ones. Seeing that they could only blindly follow the route I was making, it should be quite easy to lose them thanks to maneuvering in three dimensions.
I go down the roof, jump over the next one, bounce from the pillar and come backwards, and then proceed forward while pretending to be falling down. And the monsters kept on doing just what I was doing, emulating my every single move. Soon, it seemed like their numbers started to dwindle even more. Each time I change my path or maneuver differenty, there are less and less of them. And the ones that fall behind or down were not moving anymore, unable to catch up.
「Right, good work you guys and all that.」
Even if there was an infinite amount of mobs in this area, there was still plently of ways for me to outmaneuver and outsmart them. No matter how advanced, AI is just an AI that can only think in certain patterns.
「Ha! You idiots! If you want to hunt me down so badly, then bring more people or use poison gas or something like that!」
…… But in all seriousness, please don’t do that. I’d be in real trouble if you did.