I Became a Shooter: The Final Respawn

The high-pitched chime of the Quantum Crystal Lens was a death knell. The sound echoed through the cavernous cargo bay, a single, pure note that shattered the silence we had fought so hard to maintain. The massive cocoon on the platform above us convulsed, the grey, web-like strands tearing apart from the inside. The deep, guttural shriek that erupted from it was a sound of pure agony and rage. It was awake.

I snatched the Lens from its container, securing it in my inventory. There was no time for stealth now. There was only the fight for our lives. "Get back!" I yelled, my voice sounding small and weak against the creature's unholy scream.

The cocoon tore open completely. The creature that unfolded itself from within was a nightmare given form. It was a twisted fusion of glistening, organic matter and sharp, glitching, black code. It was tall and spindly, with long, whip-like limbs that ended in razor-sharp claws. Its head was a smooth, featureless ovoid, like an egg made of polished obsidian. It had no eyes, no ears, no discernible sensory organs. And its body seemed to bend the light around it, absorbing the beams from our flashlights, making it a shifting, hard-to-see silhouette of pure darkness.

This was the "Unknown Entity" from the kill feeds. The thing that had been hunting rule-breakers. Glitch had called it a new predator. The Oracle had called it a scar. Now, it had a name in my mind. It was an Echo. A distorted echo of the system's own anger.

The creature, The Echo, stood perfectly still for a moment, its featureless head twitching from side to side. It was blind. Just as we had theorized. It was listening.

The boss fight began in silence.

"No loud noises!" Anya hissed over our private comms channel. "Guns are a last resort. It's drawn to the sound!"

The Echo's head twitched again, its attention drawn to the faint sound of Anya's whisper. It moved with an impossible, silent speed, a blur of blackness. It lunged at her, its long, clawed arm slashing through the air. Anya blinked, teleporting a few meters to the side just as the claws tore through the metal crate she had been standing behind, ripping it open as if it were made of cardboard.

This was the new rule of engagement. Silence was our shield. Sound was our enemy.

The fight became a deadly, silent dance. We could not use our primary weapons. The roar of my sniper rifle or Jax's plasma repeater would be an instant death sentence, drawing the creature's full, unstoppable wrath.

Veda, the scout, was the first to act. She drew her silenced pistols. They were weak, but they were quiet. She fired a series of soft pfft-pfft-pfft sounds. The bullets hit the creature's side, but they seemed to be absorbed by its strange, light-dampening skin, leaving no visible wounds.

The Echo's head snapped in her direction. It was a feint. While its head turned, one of its long, whip-like limbs lashed out in a different direction, towards Jax. The heavy weapons expert was too slow to dodge. He brought his massive plasma repeater up to block. The creature's claws screeched against the weapon's casing, throwing Jax back several feet. He was unharmed, but the loud sound of metal on metal made the Echo flinch, as if in pain.

It was vulnerable to sound. It hunted by it, but it was also hurt by it.

A plan began to form in my mind. "We need to overload its senses," I whispered into my comms. "It's not about damage. It's about distraction."

I scooped up a loose metal bolt from the floor. I threw it as hard as I could. It clattered against a container on the far side of the platform. The Echo reacted instantly, its entire body contorting as it dashed towards the source of the sound with incredible speed.

Its back was exposed.

"Now!" I yelled.

Jax, understanding the plan, charged forward. He did not fire his weapon. He used it as a massive club, swinging the heavy plasma repeater into the creature's back. At the same time, Veda unloaded another volley from her silenced pistols, and I fired my own P-19. The combined, silent assault hit the creature while it was disoriented. It shrieked, that strange, soundless scream echoing in our minds, and stumbled away.

We had found a weakness. We could hurt it.

The fight fell into a tense, grueling rhythm. I would create a sonic lure, throwing a piece of debris to draw its attention. Then, while it was distracted, the team would pour on the damage. It was working. But it was slow. And the creature was adapting. It stopped falling for the same trick twice.

Then, my curse struck again.

The System Anathema, my constant, unwelcome companion, decided to join the fight. The ship's emergency lighting system, which had been dead for years, suddenly flickered to life. The massive overhead lights flashed on and off in a chaotic, random pattern. And worse, a distorted, blaring alarm began to sound throughout the entire ship. A loud, repetitive, unavoidable noise.

It was a disaster.

The constant, blaring alarm overloaded the Echo. It went completely berserk. It stopped reacting to our small sounds. It was now just a whirlwind of pure, blind rage. It lashed out wildly in all directions, its long, sharp limbs a cyclone of death. Its soundless scream was a constant, painful pressure in my head. The carefully controlled fight devolved into a desperate scramble for survival.

Jax was hit, a deep gash torn in his heavy armor. He roared in pain. Veda was pinned down, unable to get a clear shot. We were losing.

In the chaos, a moment of clarity hit me. I remembered Caden's notes about the system's architecture. About its self-correcting programs. I looked at the Echo, at its glitching, corrupted form. It was not a bug. It was a feature. A new, terrifyingly efficient "Garbage Collection" program. It was designed to hunt and delete things that broke the system's rules. Glitch-exploiters. Cheaters. And me. It was drawn to my Anathema status. It was here for me.

My heart pounded in my chest. I could not kill it with bullets. The creature was a piece of the system itself. You cannot shoot a program. But maybe… maybe you could make it crash.

I remembered my fight with the Cleanser. I had overloaded it with corrupted data. This creature was already made of corrupted data. It was native to it. Maybe the opposite would work. Maybe I could overload it with a burst of pure, clean data, forcing a system error, a fatal crash.

I had the perfect tool for the job. The [Prototype Weapon Core]. A sphere of pure, stable, system-level energy.

"Anya!" I yelled over the blaring alarms. "I have a plan! I need you to get close to it! On its back!"

Anya, who had been providing covering fire, looked at me, her eyes wide. She understood the insanity of what I was asking. But she also understood that we were out of options. She nodded once.

She blinked. Her body dissolved into static and reappeared directly on the Echo's thrashing back. The creature roared in fury, trying to shake her off, its long limbs unable to reach her.

"Leo, now!" she screamed, her voice strained as she held on for dear life.

I took out the Prototype Weapon Core. It pulsed with a warm, powerful light in my hand. I threw it to her. "Anya, catch!"

She caught it. Her instructions were simple. Terrifying. "Slam the Core into its body!" I yelled. "It should overload its code!"

It was a complete gamble. It would either overload and destroy the creature, or the resulting explosion of pure energy would consume them both.

Anya raised the pulsating sphere high, ready to strike the fatal blow.

As she did, the featureless face of the Echo turned, its head twisting at an impossible angle to look directly at her.

A mouth, a jagged, glitching tear in reality, opened on its smooth face. And it spoke.

It spoke not with its own voice, but with a dozen distorted voices at once. The ghostly, digital echoes of the players it had killed.

And I recognized one of those voices. It was Kain's.

"You... are... not... welcome... here..." the creature rasped, its chorus of dead voices a final, chilling curse.