3 3 The Glitch
Urie opened the pouch and 3 cards flew from it to the Compendium at his inventory.
He checked the other items inside the pouch.
[Beast Connoisseur Clan Badge, Consumable
Specialist, you say? We are full of them!
Description: Connoisseurs are people who specialize in a certain job or hobby. Beast Connoisseurs have special characteristics that let them capture any beasts of any class.
Abilities
Passive:
Eyes of a Specialist: The beastmaster can peek through the weaknesses, strengths, likes, and dislikes of a beast.
(Level 1/10)
Tamer's Charm: If a Connoisseur captured a beast through [Taming] there's a 10% chance that the beast will evolve.
(Level 1/10)
Note: Passives levels up as long as it activates frequently
Active:
Tame All You Want: Once this skill is activated, the caster will emit an aura to make a beast submissive by chance. 10% effect chance.
(Level 1/10) Additional 5% every level gained.]
After reading the description of the badge, he used the badge as it dissolved into particles and floated away.
"Next item!" Urie exclaimed as he took a pair of green gloves and examined it.
[Slime Gloves, Hand Equipment
Ew! It's icky and sticky!
Description: A glove weaved from fibers of solidified slime. (How is that possible? Ask the one who made it dweeb!)
Abilities:
Sticky Handling: When equipped, touching the beast before it turns into a card will give the owner 99% chance to get the card. (Why 99%? Give a chance to others, greedy fool!)
When it is stored, all the items in the inventory will gain the [Sticky] buff where they will never drop as battle trophies when lost a battle. Buff also applies to the Compendium Cards as long as the Compendium is stored. (Now you can hog everything you have!)]
"Whoever made this flavor text, they sure love to mock the players!" Urie commented while having a grimace.
"Big bro! There's only 1 hour before they will close the server to everyone! I'll log out first so that I can come with the force the company sent to pick you up! I'll send you a message on what's happening!" Arie waved as his body slowly became particles.
"Now I'm alone, what to do?" Urie asked himself when a ring suddenly echoed in his ear and a notification appeared in front of him.
[Clan Quest Incoming!]
[Be The Greatest Tamer! Collect all the beasts around the Town of Beginnings!
Progress: 4/12
Rewards: Cool Red Jacket, 5 silvers, 200 exp]
"And here comes what I need to do!" Urie exclaimed as he accepted the quest and started capturing beasts around the Town of Beginnings.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a powerful storm is affecting the whole Central City.
A large white van with the mark of the Groundhog appeared in front of a dilapidated house.
A man exited the van and approached the young man waiting outside the house despite the angry sky having its rampage.
"Are you the one who contacted us?" The man asked the drenched young man.
The young man nodded in response.
"Where's the disk and the player?" The man asked.
The young man handed over a burnt disc to them and entered the house.
"There's my brother!" Arie pointed to the young man lying on a sofa.
Two people came in and checked him.
"Confirmed, he entered the stage of deep sleep! If we forcefully remove the headset, his brain will stop functioning and everything will also stop, including his autonomous organs," The lady who looked at Urie's condition stated.
"Bring in the stretcher!" The man who first asked Arie ordered.
They gently lift the body and put him on a stretcher. They brought the body to the van with Arie.
They drove towards a gigantic building in the Central City High District.
"Message your brother to stay inside the town while the server is down to avoid any mental complications," A man who was holding a laptop while typing instructed the young man.
"How? Should I log in the game again?" Arie asked.
"No! Silly, use your account and ID number on your phone to contact your brother, it's linked on your Beastmaster Accounts!" The techy man informed him.
Arie typed something on his phone and hit send.
They reached the pure white building where fancy technologies can be seen and floating cars are getting out of the building to prepare to avoid being stranded while a seldom number of cars are going in.
"We'll monitor your brother's vitals from time to time, since you're alone and still dependent, you can stay here for the moment until we fix everything!" The man comforted as he gestured for one of the staff to guide Arie to a room.
"Can I go to my brother?" Arie asked.
"Not until you dry yourself and change your clothes!" The staff smiled at him as he led him to one quarter inside the building owned by the GroundHog Company.
A ring echoed in Urie's ear as he looked at the interface to find out that he received an email from Arie.
He read the email and stored it in his saved messages.
"So I need to stay inside the town while the server shutdown is happening, eh? Okay!" Urie nodded as he walked back to the Town of Beginnings while holding two cards, a Hanin Card and a Moss Cow Card.
[System]
[The Beastmasters Online is having a server shutdown for the safety of the players while the storm is currently happening. Sorry for inconvenience, please return to the town and log out within 5 minutes to prevent some data loss.]
The announcement repeated for three times as people surged back to the Town of Beginnings.
"What should I do during the time no one is here? Am I supposed to just bore myself to death?" Urie thought as players slowly disappeared one by one around him.
[System]
[Last 10 Seconds to log out!]
After the 10 seconds time passed by.
[System]
[Shutting down…]
When this notification appeared the horizon slowly turned into particles slowly eating the entire world.
"Wait! This is reset! I thought they're just closing the server!" Urie exclaimed as he slowly moved backward while looking at the pixels slowly fading away.
"No! I don't want to die here!" Urie continuously shook his head as his face became pale and his breathing became ragged.
Slowly, the pixels crept near him.
It cornered him in a dark alley behind the inn inside the Town of Beginnings, where the town is nowhere anymore.
His body started stopping and moving involuntarily.
"No! Please don't glitch on me r-r-right now-w-w!" Urie exclaimed as his voice glitches and his face and body started distorting.
While moving backwards, a black rift suddenly appeared behind him as he accidentally touched it and pulled him.
The process of him being pulled into the rift is slow and painful that he kept on screaming.
Meanwhile, inside the GroundHog Company, a young man is lying on a bed where different apparatus is attached to him.
He twitched until he shook non-stop, like a patient having their seizures.
People rushed in as they started doing things to the shaking man.
"Check his vitals! ITs check the game status and work with the neurologists to find what caused this reaction!" The man with a white beard exclaimed.
"What's happening to my brother?" Arie worriedly asked.
"We're working on it! For now, don't worry and return to your room!" The old man instructed.
Arie helplessly abided and returned to his room with a worried face.
The people inside the room where Urie was are in panic and didn't know what to do.
"What have they done!" The head IT exclaimed while looking on his portable computer.
"What is it?" The old man asked.
"I strictly forbid them to do a game reset! Someone made a game reset after closing the servers!" The head IT reported.
"Hurry! Fix it!" The old man ordered as the head IT nodded and ran towards the place where the IT Department is located.
Inside the game, Urie regained his consciousness and saw himself in a pure white place with black glitches creeping all over the place.
From a distance, he saw a black dot which is stationary. No matter how long he waited, it didn't move, unlike the other glitches that moved around.
Urie approached the black dot and as he got close, he slowly gained the basic shape of the black thing.
It's a black egg that looks glitchy, but the odd thing is that it has an interface.
[???, Egg]
[Description: ???
Developer Note: Remind to remove this one before releasing the game!]
"So this is an unremoved bug?" Urie curiously thought as he held his hand out and tried to touch the egg.
The moment his glitchy hand touched the egg, it rushed to his interface and unlocked all the locked inventory spaces and rested at the very last slot.
"W-w-wh-wha-t-t h-h-happ-en-ed-d?" (What happened?) Urie glitchily asked as the dark glitches covered his body once and then his body returned to normal.
While he was checking his body, he heard a whimper from afar.
"What could it be?"
