MADMAN APOCALYPSE

Ding!

The elevator door slid open to reveal the second floor.

I immediately took a long step back, pushing Bee up against the back wall of the elevator, just as several clawed arms came through the opening in front of us.

“This might be really loud, so cover your ears,” I told Bee.

Then I took a step forward and flung my fist into the middle of the opening.

“Eat farts!!” Brock yelled in excitement, as his pumped-up balloon body released all the air I’d filled it with in one explosive burst of power.

The sound was amplified by the elevator’s metal walls, making my ears ring, while the blast of power moved out through the floor, destroying cubicles, computers, laptops, monitors, and the many spider people who’d been operating them.

After the dust and debris settled, I stepped out of the elevator to survey the damage, noting with satisfaction that not a single spider remained alive.

“Wait, crap, I need more punches to power up my big Pow,” I muttered.

A wisp glowered over the crushed remains of a spider with a faint red smudge on its deflated abdomen.

Leftovers of Enemy ‘2nd Floor Manager’:

‘Floor 2 Keycard’

“Onwards and up!” I said, grabbing the keycard and running back to the elevator.

“It goes down,” Bee reminded me.

“Oh right.”

I pulled out the previous wafer and inserted the new one. This time, the buttons for floors one, two, and three lit up.

Bee pulled her hands away from her ears. “That was quick.”

I clicked the button for floor three and the doors slid closed, crushing the few arms that lay across the threshold with frightening ease.

As the piano and chitter music started up again, the sirens playing out on the floor died away below us, before the one above grew in volume.

Ding!

The door slid open and I leapt out with a punch into the nearest spider, pulping his head, before back-handing another so hard she flew into a cubicle and broke a table.

“Fak yes, Gamby!!”

A few clawed hands swung for me, but I made good use of my I-Frames passive to roll through the attacks and attackers, coming up from behind them and retaliating with lethal strikes. All the enemies on this floor were weak enough that they didn’t survive more than a single hit.

“Beetle-Moth Sting!” I heard Bee yell, before the sound of a hissing acid made several spiders scream in agony. Given that she was also holding the Scion’s Claw, it meant that, in addition to the Venom from her attack, she was also causing them to lose a percentage of their health every second.

Panda was on my shoulder as I punched my way through the floor’s occupants, counting up each punch.

“By the way,” he said, while I lifted up the corpse of a crushed spider and flung it at a nearby target, “The Fiendblood Sickness won’t turn these guys into Fiends.”

“Take a bite of this knuckle-sandwich!!” Brock squealed as I punched the Third Floor Manager in the mouth.

“That’s good, at least,” I replied.

I stooped to pick up the keycard the Manager dropped, before moving back to where Bee was beating a disabled spider in the head with her silver finger wand.

“I got the card, let’s keep going.”

She got in one more hit before following me back into the elevator.

As I swapped out the keycards, she said, “Their levels only went up by one.”

“So that means…” I muttered, trying to do the math.

“That by the eleventh floor they’ll be level 20.”

“Probably shouldn’t be an issue, but I’ll power up Brock between the floors just to be safe.”

I clicked the button and the doors slid closed.

Floors four through six were no different than the two before, with the increments in levels being completely unfelt by me, though Bee’s attacks did need a follow-up to kill once we hit the sixth floor.

When the ding sounded and floor seven was revealed, we came face-to-face with a familiar creature. The room was filled with monitors on the walls, which showed Players from all over the Region, some of whom I recognized, like Matthew Twine, Steve, and the weird Otter Mascot. In the middle of the room was a couch upon which lounged an emerald-colored humanoid wasp, holding a screen in her hands.

“What are you doing here?” asked Jeza the Announcer, putting down the tablet and getting up.

“She’s level 60,” Bee warned.

“I know,” I replied.

“I think, because of the elevators, your current ‘fight’ has been resetting every floor,” Panda commented in a whisper.

If he was right, this meant that all my punches so far had been for nothing.

“A shame,” I muttered. “But I already figured out a work-around.”

“Give us the floor keycard,” Bee told the Announcer, while I was shadowboxing the air next to her. Brock was releasing small puffs, though, without me giving my all with these punches, none of them were actually dangerous.

Panda gave me an incredulous look. “There’s no way that’ll work.”

“Read the description again,” I told him.

“My ass is on the line here,” Jeza told us.

Bee followed me as I slid out through the elevator doorway, keeping up my small punches.

“What are you doing?” she then asked me.

“Preparing for when you turn this into a fight.”

“You should kill her,” Panda told me. “She lied to you about Logan going after the Mayor.”

I blinked. I’d already forgotten about that.

“It wasn’t a lie,” Jeza said. “More of a misdirection.”

“Shit, she can hear me,” Panda muttered. “Definitely kill her. Like right now!”

“I’ve been watching your fight with Riii on replay and I know how to defeat you. You won’t get to the upper floors.”

“Let’s put that to a test, shall we?” I replied.

I leapt forward, just as Jeza lifted into the air with a blur of her wings and two massive muscular blue arms grew out from her back, similar to the spirit arms that Riii had used.

The Announcer brought the two giant fists down on top of me, but I dodgerolled through them, popping up close to her body and sending a fist forward.

“Punch.spinTheWheel( )!”

“.interrupt( ),” she said, cancelling my ability, while also jabbing her abdomen and stinger directly at my face.

WARNING!

You have been interrupted and your ability is now on cooldown!

Time remaining:

119,418,116 μs

I dodgerolled through the attack and emerged behind her back.

At the same time, Bee used her Beetle-Moth Sting and sent a jet of pressurized acid washing over Jeza, just as she turned around to face me.

The Announcer grunted in pain and flung one of her big hands out to swat the girl, but it whiffed as Bee dove back into the safety of the elevator.

Exploiting the distraction, I swung my fist at her body.

Quick as lightning, the other ethereal hand came up between us like a shield.

I grinned, since she hadn’t thought to use something preventing me from actually hitting her.

“Pow.”

Time froze, as though the damage calculations made the whole of the Great Game come to a standstill.

ACTIVATING SCRIPT: Math.pow(Punch)!

Number of Punches recorded in fight: 83

Calculating Punch to the Power of 83

…

…

…

Calculations complete!

Bee, somehow expecting the devastation I was about to deliver, had shut the elevator doors to protect herself.

The tip of my middle-finger knuckle gently tapped the ethereal-blue hand that Jeza hid behind. Then the light of a hundred suns came to life at the point of impact, before a tremendous heat and energy expanded outwards, away from me and towards the Announcer wasp.

Perhaps thanks to my Transition Lenses, I was able to observe the effect of the blinding light, as Jeza was atomized by the solar flare that erupted from my punch. Not a single visible mote of ash was left behind as the energy blew outward from the tip of my balloon gauntlet.

The powerful effect continued outwards in a cone, stripping the floor, walls, and ceiling of all matter wherever it touched. As the building’s interior was deleted from existence, it exposed the screaming tapestry of the Dungeon Barrier that was, for some reason, placed around the Broadcast Headquarters.

I rocked back a step, as smoke and steam filled the room, before tumbling back onto my ass with a thud.

“Holy shit,” I muttered in disbelief.

“That was sick as!! Do it again!!”

Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x

‘Uncountable’

Deal an uncountable amount of damage.

The System is a robust entity capable of handling an unknowable amount of data, performing flexible and complex reactions to each individual Player’s actions, of which there used to be billions.

You just made it pause in order to figure out how much damage your attack dealt…

Clearly this new Ability of yours is unfair and broken, and we have reported it.

Reward: Another talk with the big guy.

As expected, a familiar announcement followed.

WARNING!

A GREAT GAME ADJUDICATOR HAS BEEN SUMMONED!

CEASE HOSTILITIES OR BE VAPORISED!

VACATE THE LANDING ZONE IMMEDIATELY!