EBO: Resume - Chapter 12

January 9th, 2027

Just over a week had passed since Satoshi’s introduction of his Level 50 form and the first attempt at killing him. In that time, Nexus Theory had finalized the data needed for the game’s 3.0 Update, and began rolling it out in small, moderated patches that built up slowly. Some of the beta testers still active in the game, including Hunter, worked to debug the patches any glitches they encountered. At long last, players were greeted with Entity Burst Online, version 3.0.0. And what was done to celebrate? Another Genm hunt.

Satoshi, waiting for the day that the game would update, anticipated that they’d have some kind of hidden mechanism installed in order to free the players. The system required external monitoring in order to keep it under Satoshi’s control, and that monitoring was done by his allies in reality. However, the plan required that said allies were to quit the company if they deemed suspicious, resulting in the developers slowly but surely regaining control of the game. Instead of worrying about his inevitable defeat, he decided to relish his still-tight grip on the VR core that held every player’s consciousness.

Arriving at the designated location, dozens of players with higher-Level equipment came with weapons brandished and armor equipped. Among those players were Shouma, better known as Anomaly, in his Level 50 Fighter form, and the three Hatena Military Police members in their highest Level forms. Hunter was not present due to a meeting with the Beta Testers concerning how to deal with Kuroto.

“Alright, everyone. Remember: take up any and all possible entry and exit points. Make sure to barrage Genm so he doesn’t get a chance to use Pause.” Shouma hashed out the plan for everyone. “Alert everyone if you find him, don’t try to be a hero and take him down yourself. The game may have updated, but don’t expect our powers to skyrocket just to put us on par with him. Right now, the three Military Police officers and I are your best shot at taking him out.”

Everyone voiced their agreement with the plan in some form, and proceeded to fan out in groups of 3 or 4. Shouma and Hideo walked together while Haruko branched off with a group of snipers. Kyoka and a group of stealth-based players snuck off and began patrolling the area. Satoshi stood far, far away from the group of players in the city, already in his Level 50 suit.

“Nanaha. I’ve upgrade your Succubus equipment to Level 30, don’t waste it.” He told her through their communications channel.

“Got it.” Nanaha replied from an area seemingly made of nothing, but there was a visible window that she could snipe through. “Void shelter… How intriguing…”

“You’ll stay hidden from them, and the increased range on your rifle will keep you hidden. My Pause only affects a 20 meter radius, so you’d better take out those vanguard groups before I move in.” Satoshi finished, staying behind and equipping his Dual-Visor II in beam-gun mode.

= = =

Meanwhile, at Hunter’s meeting with the beta testers, they were talking to the developers concerning the recent update and patches. Simple grey orbs floated around, talking to the testers. Hunter was holding two cartridges in his hands: Binary Specter and Izanagi Arms. When the testers finished asking their questions, Hunter raised his hand.

“Yes, Hunter?” One of the developers acknowledged him.

“About Izanagi Arms…” Hunter began. “Why can’t I activate it? Ever since you left it with me and Zero Specter, I’ve been unable to use it.”

“One moment…” The developer turned his attention back to the other testers. “If there are no other inquiries aside from Hunter’s, I must request that you all leave immediately. This is a personal matter between him and us developers.”

The testers clamored and left the scene, leaving just Hunter and three grey orbs representing the developers.

“Now then.” Hunter held up Izanagi Arms. “Explain, please.”

“We were waiting for the 3.0 Update to get up and running smoothly. That unit there is the activation key for our anti-Genm plan. The reason it won’t activate is because it required two factors: the 3.0 Update’s release, and an Entity to occupy it.” One of the orbs elaborated.

“So you gave me an empty cartridge with a pre-made label?” Hunter asked them, confused.

“Yes and no. The unit itself isn’t necessarily empty. Rather… it’s sleeping. It needs another Entity to enter it and awaken it.”

“So… I can use any Entity to wake it up?”

“Not quite. It needs a Specter-type Entity to awaken the unit, since you are the “Crimson Specter” and all.”

“Then… I can just port over any one of my Specters and awaken it?”

“Well… you’d need a powerful Specter. Something equivalent to Level 10, at the very least.”

“Then… the Binary Specter would work, wouldn’t it?”

“Indeed it would. We can set up the transfer process now if you’d like.” One of the orbs began to shapeshift into a machine with two slots: one for the Binary Specter double-cartridge and one for the Izanagi Arms cartridge.

“That would be perfect. And the Level 0 unit. You gave me negation for what purpose?”

“We didn’t know what power Genm what specifically, so we gave you the power to negate whatever it was he chose. That’s how you could briefly escape the effects of Pause.” One of the devs explained.

“How long will this transfer take?” Hunter loaded the two cartridges into their respective slots and pressed a button.

“About a minute to transfer, and 10 minutes to fully awaken Izanagi Arms.”

“What will Izanagi Arms even do?”

“It will make Zero Specter a viable combat unit, as well as some other fancy additions.”

“Like?”

“Weapon summoning, elemental damage modifiers, full resistance to the effects of Pause, and enough power to rival and surpass Genm. We’ve also looked into upgrading your comrades’ equipment. Haruko and Kyoka will be getting a Level 50 of their own. Hideo’s got his own Level 99 upgrade. Shouma’s unit can now access its full potential as a Level 99 unit.”

“Level 99? What about 100? Why not even it out there?”

“That’s for you to find out.” The Developer floated to the two units and watched as the Binary Specter double-cartridge turned into pixels, which then rushed over and fused to Izanagi Arms. Once the fusion was complete, the orb removed the unit and used levitation to hand it to Hunter. “10 minutes for it to awaken. We’ve located Genm, it’ll take about 10 minutes to get there at top speed on your Mach Corvus. Go.”

Hunter nodded, took the cartridge, and walked away. The orbs faded away as the area turned to pixels and disappeared in a dull flash. In that flash, Hunter transformed into Level 0 and summoned his bike, holstering the awakening cartridge on his belt-side carrier strap and riding off to the scene of the fight as fast as he could.

= = =

While the Genm attack party searched for their target, Nanaha began to take aim. Looking through her Void shelter’s window, she began picking off targets one by one. First: Snipers. As Haruko set up, people around her fell. She began tracing the origin of the shots, but was unable to locate the rifle from which they were shot. The bullets caused players to die almost immediately, taking out all but 1% of their health gauges. Players began panicking before being executed by another shot. “YOU DIED” could be heard over and over as more virtual bodies bit the dust and faded into pixels. A kill count appeared next to the grim message totalling up around 10 or so players. Almost all their snipers had been taken out. Almost all of them.

Immediately, Haruko jumped towards the nearest shadow and sank into it. One of Hunter’s presents before leaving for the data meeting was another minor upgrade to Level 25, granting her the ability to teleport via nearby shadows as well as see through most methods of stealth within the shadows. She could see Kyoka and her group of assassins prowling the premises through these shadows, and she could see a giant empty void in the middle of the sky, from which bullets were flying out of.

“Enemy sniper...” She muttered to herself. “It’s gotta be Genm’s support.”

Haruko began making her way to the nearest shadow under Nanaha’s pocket of nothingness and aiming her rifle at where Nanaha would be. Once she rose back up into the normal virtual world, she would lose her ability to see Nanaha’s hiding spot. She need to have her rifle trained on her counterpart and ready to fire the moment she exited the shadows.

“Let’s do it…” She left the darkness behind, reappearing under the shade of a tree. As soon as Haruko had fully materialized, she fired as many shots as she could at where Nanaha should be. The shots punctured through the void pocket and struck their intended target, wounding her.

“Urgh… how…?!” Nanaha yelped in pain and looked around her pocket of void. Small, bullet-sized holes revealing light from her surroundings matched the areas where she was hit. She switched her communication channel with Satoshi on again. “I’ve been comprised, relocating immediately.”

“How many did you take out?” He replied, still waiting on the outskirts of the area.

“I’ve taken the majority of their snipers out. There’s that pesky Shadow-based Sniper that accompanies the Specter, who found me out just now.”

“And the vanguard?”

“Couldn’t get to all of them.” Nanaha opened the void window, jumped out, and fired some rounds in Haruko’s general direction before rolling onto the ground and opening another void window to duck into. From there, she dived in and out of these void shelters to avoid Haruko’s projectiles as she relocated. “She’s spotted me, you’ll have to move in now or wait.”

“I can’t afford to wait. You’ve done well for now.” Satoshi replied before cutting the comm link and approaching the people.

Before the trio that found him could report anything, Satoshi fired his beam-gun at them. The rapid burst of energy knocked them down as Satoshi hit the buttons on his Dual-Visor to initiate a finisher. His weapon announced “Critical Discharge!” as he blasted the three of them with a powerful energy blast that incinerated them and caused three more “YOU DIED” messages to display themselves. With three less opponents, Satoshi moved forward. Running into the middle of the area at blinding speeds, Satoshi jumped and landed in the approximate center of their current battlefield before pressing the two buttons on the his belt. Pause… rang out as a clock stopped ticking. The battlefield stopped dead in its tracks, players strewn about running towards Satoshi or otherwise making their way towards him.

“Your helplessness amuses me. I rule over this land with the power to Pause your actions and ignore their effects. You have no method of defeating me. I am almighty in this realm! I hold the power to control you all! I can manipulate you as I please! I AM GOD!!” Satoshi mused to the frozen players around him. “I hold immortality in my hands! I can stop your actions at will! All of your lives fit in my palm!! I can throw away as many as I want to! Why?! Because I AM GOD!!!”

“That so?” A voice spoke from behind Satoshi. He turned around and was immediately met with a fireball to the mask.

“Urgh, who are you to defy me?! A god?!?” Satoshi hit the ground, but rose back up and saw… Hunter, in his Level 0 form holding two cartridges in one hand and a pistol in the other, standing beside his bike. “You…”

“Yes, me.” Hunter replied, spinning the gun in his hand before tossing it aside. He passed one of the cartridges he was holding to his now-empty hand, hitting the button on the other to return his bike to its cartridge.

“How do you defy the Pause?!” Satoshi yelled angrily.

“Level 0. My version of Level 0, anyway.” Hunter replied, holstering the unit holding his bike as he walked around normally. “I can nullify your bullshit, Kuroto. And… I’ve got something to make up for Level 0’s weakness...”

He held up the other cartridge he was holding, which was labelled ‘Izanagi Arms.’ Hitting the button, Hunter activated the unit before inserting it into the second slot on his Driver and closing the Lever.

“No! You will not stop me!” Satoshi activated another Critical Discharge and unleashed it on Hunter.

“Level Overdrive.” Hunter proclaimed as he flipped the Driver open just as the Finisher made contact.

The ensuing explosion obscured his figure with smoke and flames. Satoshi fired more energy beams at the smoke while advancing towards it at a rapid pace. As he approached the smoke, Satoshi switched his Dual-Visor to its Blade mode before thrusting the weapon forward to stab Hunter. He expected to stab his enemy, but was met with nothing as his strike dispersed the smoke cloud from its sheer force.

“What?! Where did you go?!” Satoshi growled violently as he began slashing all around him like a madman.

“Behind you.” Hunter’s voice calmly replied. Satoshi turned around, met with Hunter’s fist in his face. When Satoshi recovered, he took a good look at Hunter’s armor.

Instead of the grayscale color scheme that Hunter had in his Level 0 form, his armor was now red and white. Sleek, silver greaves with red detailing ran up to his knees, tapering off to a point. Dark silver armor covered his right leg while polished silver armor covered his left, leading up to his Driver’s strap. A dark red coat with three torn coattails flowed freely in the wind. His black undersuit had gained significant amounts of white in the form of angular detailing running on the sides of the suit and down the center of his chest. Red outlined these details, though some of it bled into the details it encased. His chestplate no longer features an HP gauge. Instead, it features a more knight-like design with a coat of arms running down from it and off his body ending at his knees. A tattered cloak is tied around his torso, draped over his right shoulder which features smoother, smaller armor. The shoulder armor on his left was heavier and covered more area, with a golden pendant holding the cloak in place over where his heart is. This golden pendant held within in a brilliant jade gem. The ends of his coattails and cloak glowed faintly as if they had been set on fire and burned away to their current state. His gauntlets retained their general shape, now colored pure silver on the right and charred silver on the left with additional spikes that were placed in a manner that increased the damage of Hunter’s punches. His coat featured a stiffened collar that fit through gaps in the chest harness.

When Satoshi’s eyes settled on the mask, he glared in pure anger. Hunter’s mask was simple, as it always was. Sleek and angled, with six angled slits glowing dark red and a dark silver mouth-guard area that extended up and wrapped around behind his head. Somehow, as if the mask didn’t exist, Satoshi could see that Hunter’s face, determined to end this fight.

“If you think you can challenge a god, then you are the most foolish of fools…” Satoshi spat venomously, rising from the dirt and holding his Dual-Visor with its energy blade in a combat stance.

“You’re not a god. Just a deluded psychopath with a god complex…” Hunter returned, holding out his hand and summoning two swords.

The first was a silver European-style greatsword with a red center and an ornate guard with a red and black hilt, which he grasped in his right hand. The other was a single-edged, Odachi-like greatsword with a thick, black blade outlined in dark red which lead into a curved, wing-like guard and a white and red hilt with a golden tassel hanging off the end of the pommel. This second blade, Hunter wielded in his left hand, assuming a stance with both swords.

Satoshi simply growled before launching himself towards Hunter, disappearing and reappearing as if teleporting. Hunter countered his opponent’s swing with his left blade before stepping forward and thrusting his right sword at Kuroto. The blade made contact and cut into Satoshi’s chestplate as he side-stepped to dodge the attack, following his evasion up with a kick to distance them.

“Damn you… I’ve already used Pause to freeze these other imbeciles…” Kuroto muttered under his breath. He switched his weapon to beam-gun mode and fired at Hunter, who deflected the shots of the glistening silver of his right-hand blade while he kept his left-hand sword behind him as he ran towards Kuroto.

“Fighting with your biggest advantage rendered ineffective against me. This is perfect!” Hunter proclaimed as he began slashing at Kuroto with his blades, unleashing a fast-paced blurr of slashes.

“Pause is my greatest advantage for multiple reasons, Specter…” Satoshi managed to survive the sword onslaught, positioning himself out of the way of a few launched projectiles that were now aimed at Hunter. He then hit his belt’s buttons to Resume… their actions, causing the projectiles to hit Hunter instead of Satoshi.

“You really think that’s gonna take me down?!” Hunter cried out as he dashed out of the ensuing smoke cloud and impaled Satoshi with his sword. Without delay, Hunter’s other sword came down and cut into Satoshi, slicing cleanly into his chest as he removed the impaled sword and spun around to cleave into his opponent before kicking him away.

“Hunter!” Hideo called out to him from the sidelines as he jumped into the fray. “When did you get here?!”

“Couple of… paused minutes ago.” Hunter replied. “Found out what that other unit does…”

“Liking the new suit, honestly. We’re gonna need an upgrade after all this…”

“I’ll get to that when we’re back to base. Where’s Haruko?”

“Dealing with Genm’s sniper support. I don’t know where they are exactly, so—” Hideo’s sentence was cut short by a bullet whizzing past his mask. “Speak of the devil…”

“Hm. There they are…” Hunter noted as he watched the two snipers dueling, firing bullet for bullet at each other while maneuvering around the map to get an advantage over one another. “They’re really going at it, huh?”

“Yep… Shall we kick Genm’s ass?” Hideo replied, turning to face their adversary who had been stumbling towards them from the wall he had landed in from Hunter’s kick.

“Yes, let’s.” Hunter grinned under his mask as Shouma approached them in Fighter form.

“Glad to see mister Beta Superstar finished his meeting. With a spiffy upgrade, nonetheless.” Shouma commented on Hunter’s new armor before taking up a stance as Kuroto stood in front of them. “Now then… Let’s kick this fucker’s ass!”

The three of them charged at Satoshi as fast as they could. Hunter, bearing the most powerful armor, reached their target first, allowing him to hack and slash away at this zombie before kicking him towards his allies. Next up, Shouma unleashed a punching barrage at blinding speeds, finishing by uppercutting Satoshi into the air, jumping up to follow him, and punching him straight towards Hideo. Grinning, Hideo unleashed the full might of his non-lethal equipment: an onslaught of hard-light impact bullets struck Satoshi, followed by heavy blunt arrows and a several hard-hitting beams of light energy.

As Satoshi flew in the air following this last attack, he Paused everyone but Hunter and himself, though he instead used his Critical Discharge finisher on Hunter to propel himself away from his enemy rather than to attack him; he did hope that the attack connected to allow him more time to retreat. Even if the attack hit or not, Satoshi landed on the ground, Resumed the game, grabbed Nanaha, and ran away.

“Eh? Sa- er.. Genm, what’s wrong?” Nanaha asked, confused.

“Specter’s obtained power that rivals mine. We need to retreat and regroup for the time being.” Satoshi replied before summoning his bike and riding off. Nanaha followed suit and left the area.

After spending about half an hour scouring the area, the survivors of the group deemed that Kuroto and Nanaha had retreated, and declared their mission a success despite their heavy losses and the fact that Kuroto remained alive. Beating their common enemy back twice now was something worth declaring victorious, even if their efforts came at the cost of many lives.

As Hunter stated earlier, he was going to give his friends their upgrades. The first step was Shouma’s equipment. After dissecting the data within Shouma’s Paradox Personas, Hunter was able to unlock the final upgrade it contained within: a Level 99 form accessed via a Cartridge Driver. Hunter simply gave Shouma one of his spare Drivers and returned the Paradox Personas unit to its owner.

Next, Hideo’s upgrade. With the Level cap seemingly raised to 99, Hunter decided to create a Level 99 cartridge that would suit his non-lethal ally. The mobile armory remained, now armed with wrist-mounted rifles, a shoulder-mounted machine gun, deployable shotguns on both arms, micro-missile launchers and grenade launchers, the sound-compression devices were included once again, the crossbows kept, and his extending quarterstaff kept. The unit also boasts the ability to travel at near-light speed, a much more advanced restoration/healing technique that can restore Void-afflicted damage, hard-light hologram projection, and the power to use ambient light to enhance this unit’s performance. An automatic cancellation sequence was installed into the unit’s data to protect Hideo from overheating. Hunter christened this unit “Sunlight Striker.”

Despite having the data from his Izanagi Arms fully accessible, he was incapable of copying the part of the code that allowed him to resist Pause over to Hideo’s unit. Whenever the code was copied outside of Izanagi Arms, it would delete that code. Any manual attempts to recreate the code resulted in being incapable of proceeding past a certain point once the system registered it as Anti-Pause code. Hunter sighed, unsure why the code was incapable of being reproduced to benefit his allies. Moving on from that rather-disappointing discovery, Hunter began using the data gathered from Paradox Personas to create a Level 50 upgrade for both Haruko and Kyoka.

For Kyoka, he created a unit with the power to channel absolute zero in addition to the varieties of knives that would be carried over. A temperature limit was set in place in order to protect Kyoka from internal damage caused by the absolute zero, which could also be countered with Hideo’s new unit by slowly thawing her out. This half of the unit was entitled “Absolute Zero Assassin.” Haruko’s half of this unit would contain a heavily-enhanced version of her shadow travel, as well as shadow manipulation within a 5-meter radius and minor local gravity manipulation within a 2-meter radius. Lunar energy could be gathered from the surroundings or repurposed from foreign energy. The energy would have to be regularly discharged to avoid bodily harm, so Hunter encoded a warning for Haruko should a dangerous energy limit be reached. He named her half of the unit “Moonlight Sniper” before giving this entire unit the name “Kindred Warriors βeta” and fabricating its shell to resemble the Paradox Personas it stemmed from.

As for Izanagi Arms, Hunter began digging deeper into its data. In the vast sea of complicated code, he uncovered the reason as to why the Pause-immunity was incapable of being copied. It was part of the Anti-Genm system that Nexus Theory had been developing. Should the data be copied and mass-produced, the Anti-Genm system would overload and/or receive false readings that could bring the entire rescue plan to failure. What Hunter was more curious about was the unit’s level. According to the developers, Level 99 was the maximum that a player could reach. In spite of that, Hunter discovered that Izanagi Arms was a Level 100 unit that was designed specifically for use with Zero Specter. Without Zero Specter’s nullification, the unit would remain locked and inaccessible to any other user.

Knowing that he alone possessed the power to defeat Genm, Hunter began to wonder what the developers had planned in terms of how to end this nightmare. Perhaps… Hunter had to use Izanagi Arms a certain amount of times so that the devs could safely log players out of the death game… At this point, he could only speculate…