Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

I peeked out of cover just in time to get my arm shot by a sniper posted up near the center of the circle. “Argh!”

I lurched back into cover, and roughly grabbed at the bloody wound. A Medstim started the healing process instantly, but I still had to deal with the absolute misery of being shot.

”We should’ve moved earlier.” Luna nagged in my ear like an unwanted grandmother. I waited a bit longer than I intended, and now the wall of the Node was just a few steps behind me. The wall of ominous black clouds sent chills down my spine.

”I was busy!” I held my arm and checked the map for gaps once more. I’d waited too long, and now almost every viable location was taken by Operators.

”How about here? There’s a gap you might be able to squeeze in.” Luna pinged a spot on my map.

I Burst Stepped out from behind the wall and slid into cover behind a mound of snow built up over a corpse. It was still out of the ring, but a little bit closer. The spot I just vacated was already swallowed up by the ring.

I eyed the spot in question. It was currently being claimed by a woman with a dozen swords floating around her. Six of the swords played defense and reflected bullets. The other six violently lashed out at anyone that got too close in a badass display of weapon control.

”Why couldn’t I have gotten something like that?!” I jabbed my hand forward toward the woman—only for a spray of LMG fire to light up the wall all around me. I jerked my hand backward as the gunner sprayed its outline in lead against the back wall. “Shoot someone else, bastard!”

”Come out! I promise I won’t shoot again!” The gunner shouted back over the clamour of the final circle. It was absolute chaos, with fights and gunfire a constant.

”Like I’d believe that—“ My words died in my throat as a missile slammed into the gunner from the central mound. A man in a heavily armed power armor frame had claimed the center position from the falconer. His armor looked like it sacrificed all of its protections for strong and overwhelming firepower.

I fired a shot of my Graviton Bolt at the man. The purple crystal flew through the air, and was immediately hit by a bullet from a different Operator by accident. The crystal shattered and harmlessly collapsed to the ground with a weak gravitational singularity that barely stirred the snow.

Thankfully, Reverent—based on his nametag—turned toward a different target and started to spray with dual wield miniguns. The bullets were of the smart variety, and automatically dodged around cover to hit his target with pinpoint accuracy. Just like that, two more Operators were executed.

It would’ve been a third, but a sniper shot from an anti-material rifle slammed into the power armored brute just before he could turn on someone else. He turned back with a shout to fight the hidden sniper to the death.

The death of the gunner gave me a split second, and I took it. With the ThunderGod Greaves, I instantly closed the distance toward a wall and cut right through the side of the building. I had just enough time to see the surprised expression of another Operator before I catapulted through the opposite wall and slid into the safety of the final ring.

Unfortunately, my ‘safe spot’ was inside of an armored bus that someone had abandoned out on the edge of the ring once the tires were shot out. Double unfortunately, there was practically an army of ICE programs posted up all around the area.

Just as I slid into the bus, I took four shots from behind. They crashed into my subdermal armor, and caught on the heavy duty mesh under my skin. Intense irritation and itchiness at the impact sites nearly sent me into a scratching frenzy.

I ducked into cover as gunfire poured all around me. I thought it’d slow down after a bit, but it only intensified as I found myself in the crossfire of most of the rest of the Operators. “Luna! Do something!”

“… now?” She asked hesitantly as the ring finally closed to the final circle. We had twenty minutes to sort out the winner amongst ourselves before it started its final collapse.

“Is there a better time?” I curled into a ball under the bus seats as a missile whizzed through the windows, and continued through the bus toward a building on the other side. Yes, this was my master plan. Curling into a ball and hiding away from the rest of the world. I tried not to wince at how pathetic my display looked. “LUNA! HIT THE BUTTON!”

— — —

Saint rapidly flicked through the chaos of the battlefield to show the best fights to his viewers. It was incredibly difficult given the total chaos of the event. This kind of thing usually had full teams dedicated to breaking down and showcasing, yet he was doing it all by himself.

Still, despite all of that chaos, he found time to keep up with Shiro and Luna on a side monitor. It was thanks to him keeping up with them that he caught a conversation that went unnoticed by almost everyone else streaming the event.

Instead of continuing to stream Reverent and Shadowshot engaging in one last brutal fight, he directly flicked the stream to watch Nightshade hiding in the bus. His chat instantly went into an uproar.

| ShadoWalk: You’re missing the action!

| Conjurer: @admin amateur spits to the side

| DistinguishedGentleman: It appears you made a mistake.

“Just trust me.” Saint turned up the audio, and replayed the last couple of seconds of the conversation. He caught his audience up just as the two started to speak again.

“IT'S NOW OR NEVER!” Nightshade shouted with absolute confidence as she pathetically hid under a seat. A grenade bounced into the bus, which she promptly kicked. It flew out of the bus and exploded against an Operator who was just about to charge in.

”O-okay.” Moonfall hesitated a second longer, and then finally enacted the plan that the two of them had concocted. The one that took 50 points, and that Luna had been working for the entire time Monarch’s DarkNet Battle Royale had been going.

Saint eagerly watched. Shiro had a certain way about making seemingly harebrained plans that were surprisingly effective. He’d been waiting this entire time to see what she made this time around. Knowing her, it was probably something batshit insane that only a suicidal maniac could come up with.

Moonfall’s avatar appeared in the air hovering at the center of the ring. Her ghastly blue body erupted with bursts of code that was visible to all parties. Shots instantly slammed through her ethereal body, doing no damage.

The bullets just seemed to egg on whatever Moonfall was doing. Code all around her started to glitch out and turn a burnt out black. Someone recognized what was going on, and let out a startled cry, “stop her! Everyone, together!”

| DarkRun: … no way she’s using that method. It’s suicide!

Hacks erupted from the surviving Netrunners as they joined together. For the first time in DarkNet Battle Royale history, every remaining runner set aside their differences for a common goal—take down Moonfall before she could take down all of them. They could all recognize the forbidden hack that Moonfall was trying to use.

Code, looking like fireballs, death beams, and magics straight out of fantasy, crashed in toward the wolf avatar from all directions. Protective blue firewalls erupted all around her and absorbed the attacks. A lightning bolt whizzed through the gaps in the code only to be reflected back where it came from by a sparking mirror.

More and more attacks broke through the firewalls. Although Luna was an oppressively strong Netrunner, she was only one against dozens of the best from around the world. Not to mention she was distracted by the hack she was trying to pull off.

A fireball incinerated her avatar’s shoulder, and the wireframe mesh underneath was revealed. Code surged up to fill the gaps in a temporary layer, and spat out a splotch of black code that corrupted its surroundings like a plague.

She staggered back as a golden chain shot out from just behind Reverent, and wrapped her lupine avatar again and again. The golden chain surged with light, and tried to pluck her from her position in the sky. A blazing blue chainsaw cut the chain off just before it could pull her way.

As the attacks of the other Netrunners grew increasingly varied and deadly, her avatar started to flicker and grow faint. For a single moment, it looked like they’d win. It looked like they’d derez her before she could pull off the final gambit. Then her eyes snapped open.

Burnt-out black code erupted out of her in a radial wave that filled the Node. Like zombies rising from the grave, the burned out script flickered with red lightning. The sinister red lightning spread across the air.

[Node Crash]

The snow in the air froze. Whatever Luna did froze time itself as the entire Battle Royale ground to a halt. It was like someone hit the lag switch, and everything started to break as a result. Bullets stopped midair, Operators froze mid-trigger pull, and even his cameras started to get staticky and glitch out.

When time resumed, a horrid warning siren came alongside it. The walls of the Node flexed and shattered into billions of fragments. The dark clouds of corrupted data surged like a hurricane around the edges of the node, and seeped into what had once been a safe space.

Black and red lightning surged across the unnatural storm clouds, forming twisted shapes and faces. The rogue AI that’d lurked at the edges of the Node were finally let in. Death came with them as they flooded into the final ring.

Shouts rose from the unprepared Operators as the dark clouds drowned out the entire rest of the Node. What was supposed to happen only after the match ended happened all at once. All fighting cut out as a new war started. This one with a much other chance of fatality.

The fast Operators and Netrunners instantly disconnected the moment they realized what was happening. Entering the DarkNet willingly was like intentionally becoming a cripple and then heading into a warzone. The Node had almost been taunting the rogue AI that’d gathered at its edges this entire time, so it was even worse off.

Those that weren’t fast enough found themselves instantly fried by the AI as they tracked back the connections to dive kits all over the world. Saint himself was only protected from danger by the sheer effort of the Monarch runners desperately trying to keep things running. That, and he wasn’t slag enough to full dive into the DarkNet. Similarly, his viewers were all protected too.

As the numbers of Operators left in the game plummeted, so too did his connection to Monarch’s servers. Eventually, it collapsed entirely.

[Server - Offline]

Saint stared silently at the screen for a few moments. It was only once the chat broke out of their stun and started to roll once more that he finally spoke up. “Well… that’s one way to end things.”

| DarkRun: Is that even allowed?

| Cyberpunk_Blue: What just happened? What just happened?

| ShadoWalk: The hell was that?

| DistinguishedGentleman: Moonfall’s a psycho. No wonder Monarch gave her the epitaph of Net’s Bane. Directly crashing the Node’s protections like that can only be the sign of a crazy person.

| Conjurer: Maybe it was for the best that we were wiped early.

| 2077Historian: @admin winner? @admin winner?

”I… I have no idea.” Saint rapidly sent messages to his handlers with Monarch. None of them responded. “Technically, it would be them, though.”

While he waited for a reply to come, he worked hard to calm his chat back down. A number of people had fled the stream as soon as the Node Crash hack went out. Although they were safe thanks to all the protections Monarch had in place for viewers, plenty of people didn’t want to risk getting anywhere near AI like that.

Eventually, he started to go back through the plays throughout the entire DarkNet Battle Royale to search for the very best. In his heart, the final manic play to take the entire lobby down was the clear winner. Forget loot and combat experience—none of it mattered when the rogue AIs came. All that mattered was a strong runner or a fast disconnect option.

And it seemed Monarch agreed. A few minutes after he started rolling through clips, he got a simple message. Attached to it was a log showing Nightshade and Moonfall were the last two to fully disconnect from the server.

They sat in the collapsed server for a full five minutes after everyone else either died or fled. Five minutes. He held his breath, and reread the log just to be sure. Most other contestants outright vanished, and only one of them managed to last thirty seconds. Luna protected Shiro for a full five minutes despite all of that.

Saint popped it up onto the stream and announced without any hesitation, “winner, Nightshade and Moonfall.”

The duo hadn’t just won Monarch’s DarkNet Battle Royale. They broke it entirely. Somehow, despite all of that, he found it more terrifying that they stayed in the collapsed Node for five full minutes under the oppressive attacks of countless rogue AI. Monarch hadn’t made a mistake in calling Luna Net’s Bane.