CHAPTER TWO

Jason's blade was angled precisely at the seam near his opponent's chest, just beneath the gap where a bright pink steel plate overlapped with a dull green one. Like all Giga Mech's armor, the plates were just reappropriated shields. The pink plate was a circular disk, likely once wielded by a Mech that'd resembled a gladiator. The dull green shield was a large rectangle, a shape often used by tanky artillery machines. The two disjointed plates awkwardly pushed against each other.

Normally, Jason aimed to kill his opponents with direct strikes through the enemy cockpit.

No matter how strong an enemy Mech was, the person piloting it was just an ordinary human. They'd die to virtually any amount of damage. The Mechs were so large that even glancing blows were very similar to a pedestrian getting hit head-on by a car in real life.

However, the enemy Giga Mech's cockpit was located in the well-protected head, which towered high above Jason's machine.

Most Mechs kept their cockpit in the torso, where commands would be most easily transferred to other parts of the machine. Usually, only cyborg Hemoborn like the Red Minerva had head cockpits.

However, Sickos were able to use their sheer height as a defensive weapon - Jason wouldn't be able to reach his opponent's cockpit even if he jumped. The Red Minerva simply didn't have enough leg strength. The machine had been enhanced for leaping and climbing, but as a flightless One-Star Boss, it lacked the ability to clear another Mech with a single bound like a conventional Mech could.

Instead of going for the head, Jason had to aim carefully for his opponent's operating system.

This attack was even riskier than Jason's usual deadly all-or-nothing dives towards his opponent's pilot avatar.

The critical sweet spot was a tiny cube in the Giga Mech's chest which transmitted the pilot's commands to the entire unit. Since the cockpit had been moved away from the machine's center, an additional computing system was required to run the massive Giga Mech's complex internal processes.

Unlike with conventional Mechs, the Sicko's pilot had to first transmit orders from their cockpit down to the central processor before the machine could move. The wireless transmission process was effectively instantaneous.

In fact, only a total obsessive like Jason would have known that the Sicko's cockpit was located elsewhere.

Despite his humble ranking and relatively weak Mech, Jason was obsessed with winning every battle. He was the only man in the gaming complex who would study an obscure base frame that'd been outlaws from competitive Overdrive play many years ago.

From reading the competitive battle coverage from four years ago, Jason knew that slicing out the Sicko's operating system without damaging any of the other parts was normally considered a complete gimmick.

High-level pros usually did it just to show off when playing with their lower leveled fans. It was like trying to kill someone by performing real-time heart surgery instead of simply stabbing them. The operating system was far smaller than a conventional cockpit, and if Jason missed it, he would have allowed the enormous machine to advance on him for nothing.

Jason disdained flashy players who spent their time showing off instead of making efficient and effective moves. Unfortunately, this risky gambit was Jason's only chance to win.

Jason's perfectly still hands moved his sword forward.

The thin but razor-sharp blade sang.

The modified Level One Sword smoothly evaded the armor plates. The thin sword scratched off a tiny fraction of the Sicko's chest. The thinnest sliver of dull gray metal crashed to the ground, and then Jason grinned triumphantly as all the lights on the enemy machine abruptly dimmed and faded away.

He'd done it.

His sword had perfectly excised a chunk of the Mech's operating system.

The Sicko wasn't designed to be a close combat frame, and Jason had properly punished his opponent's greatest weakness. The pinpoint weakness was almost impossible to hit from afar, but his opponent's close-ranged assault had given Jason a genuine - if still extremely challenging - opportunity.

A large rounded shadow suddenly loomed above the Red Minerva.

The cyborg dragon's eyes narrowed as Jason twirled at the triggers of his control board, finally turning his partner's head after previously keeping it as still as a statue.

Unfortunately for Jason, he wasn't out of the woods yet.

His foe had been trying to crush him with the sheer gravitational force of the wrecking ball.

Even though his opponent could no longer input commands, the heavy weapon would still fall on its own.

Jason's ultra-precise blow had disabled his opponent, but the enemy pilot was still alive in the cockpit.

As a result, the match wasn't over. An Overdrive battle didn't conclude until all enemy pilots had either died or surrendered.

If the wrecking ball hit Jason, the Red Minerva would be crushed, and he'd perish alongside his longstanding ally. It wouldn't matter that he had disabled his foe's machine.

Jason knew that he couldn't possibly run away in time.

The Red Minerva's speed was its best statistic, but it still wasn't quite good enough for such a last-second evasion. Part of being an expert pilot was not trying anything that your partner couldn't do.

Instead, Jason lashed out with the Red Minerva's mechanical goat-like foot, aiming carefully for his opponent's left thigh. The mighty hoof gripped firmly against the hard metal, further empowering his urgent kick.

The Red Minerva wasn't nearly strong enough to inflict any actual damage.

The machine was completely unscratched.

However, the enemy Giga Mech had entered into a lax position now that the pilot was incapable of entering commands. With the tiny but critical command cube damaged, the Giga Mech was now like a car on neutral.

The wrecking ball was now propelled solely by gravitational force, and even a slight push was enough to redirect the massive Mech.

The giant wrecking ball jerked wildly backward before slamming uselessly into the earth several feet away from Jason, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. Moments later, the Mech's main body tipped over and joined its signature weapon on the floor with a thundering crash.

To Jason's disappointment, the Sicko hadn't crashed cleanly through the ground. There was a magma pit at the very base of the mountain. If any Mech was completely submerged inside the burning liquid, the result would be an instant one-hit kill. The heat was so great that the pilot inside would get cooked in less than a second.

The hidden magma pit almost never featured in fights, and few players knew about it. Jason only ever managed to kill his opponents with it by severely weakening the ground before baiting them into falling.

He hadn't bothered this time because he'd assumed that the Giga Mech would crash clean through after he immobilized it.

Unfortunately, he must have overestimated the Mech's weight. Instead of falling cleanly through, the gigantic Mech was buried in the ground like a vaguely human-shaped meteorite.

Jason shrugged.

There was a reason he'd gone for the control center instead of dashing around and damaging the floor - it was a far safer win condition. Trying to dodge the massive Giga Mech would have been too dangerous.

An instant victory would have been nice, but he hadn't counted on it. He still had a lengthy backup plan.

The veteran pilot climbed on top of his defeated opponent.

His hands were taut at the controls.

He doubted anything had gone wrong, but if it had, he was ready to instantly leap aside after any hint of a movement.

The Red Minerva's right eye flared to life with a slight electric buzz as Jason activated his Mech's built-in scanner. The Red Minerva's mechanical right eye was a deep blood red without a pupil, a sharp contrast to the sharp yellow of the left eye.

The creature's right eye had been replaced by a special scanner which identified an enemy Mech's parts and weapons over time.

The scanner was a standard Overdrive part used by all machines regardless of Mech class. Typically, it replaced one of a machine's eyes, but certain players were known to hide the critical part in unexpected places.

After verifying that his foe couldn't move anymore, Jason entered an additional command, calling up the full damage breakdown.

Damage Report: The Crusher

Head: 99%

Torso: 91%

Left Arm: 93%

Right Arm: 99%

Left Leg: 97%

Right Leg: 98%

The damage report had also revealed the enemy Mech's name - The Crusher.

The name was rather plain, but it wasn't like Jason could rightfully comment on his opponent's creativity. As a Discreet Player Killer, he wasn't allowed to name his machine. The Overdrive Corporation had christened the Red Minerva for him.

Jason let out a long breath.

The enemy machine had hardly taken any damage at all.

Most of the damage had come from the initial crash.

This would be a long and painful task.

His opponent might have been disabled, but Jason still couldn't pierce through the thick armor.

On top of that, the thick helmet around the head completely covered up the vulnerable cockpit. Jason doubted the Red Minerva could break through. The helmet looked like it consisted of S-tier defensive material.

On top of that, Jason was a little worried about climbing up to the Crusher's skull.

His opponent couldn't move anymore, but it still carried some powerful weapons. If he lost footing, he might impale himself against the ground-down teeth. A bad fall on a critical point would be extremely dangerous.

It was best to take this slowly and steadily.

Jason smirked to himself.

It was sort of funny.

Whenever he was completely outclassed, Jason only had to spend a few minutes in the server before dying. The matches were over instantly.

Most of Jason's co-workers didn't mind getting destroyed. It just meant they could go right back to relaxing and waiting for the next call from their pager.

The result of the match had no effect on them. They'd given up all hope of winning.

In contrast to the many easy losses, winning was almost always long and arduous.

Jason always had to strain his mind and resources to the very limits.

Every single battle was a grueling puzzle. Most of his victories were like this - slow and arduous dissections.

But that was alright.

Jason was paid the same whether he won or lost, but he still loved Overdrive, even on the days when it seemed like a boring job.

He wanted to win more than anything else.

Jason stared at his vulnerable opponent, searching for the largest gap in the armor.

He found a likely weak point, but instead of attacking immediately, he took his time to scan his fallen opponent, then nodded.

His initial suspicion was correct.

The joint at the shoulder had taken the most damage - the force of the falling wrecking ball had jerked most of the plates out of position.

Jason reached for the prone right arm and slowly began pulling away at it.

His Mech's scaly arms struggled and struggled as his powerful feet anchored themselves against the immobilized Crusher's shoulder. By pushing with his legs, he was able to increase his amount of outputted force.

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

Jason continued steadily working.

Jason had no chance of cutting through the armor, so he opted to shift it around. After several minutes, Jason finally exposed a few loose wires at the elbow joint.

He yanked a little more, straining until the automatic safety joint of the base Sicko frame locked the part in place. The Sicko frame was weak on its own, but it'd still been professionally designed by elite crafters. The Mech had plenty of built-in performance stopgaps to guarantee a smooth piloting experience. In this case, the safety joint was designed to keep the machine from exposing weak points through overextensions.

Unfortunately, the Red Minerva lacked the strength to tear off the entire arm. This was as far as Jason could go with his bare hands.

Jason's machine was a Hemoborn, whose greatest strength was the regenerative abilities granted by their biological parts. In exchange for those healing abilities, their other statistics were reduced.

On the other hand, his opponent was a Kingbreaker, a Mech inspired by real robot stories like the Mobile Suit Gundam anime series.

The durable Kingbreakers used weapons based on hard science fiction and made up for their lack of special abilities with raw stats. Even the vulnerable Sicko frame was too durable for the Red Minerva to deal with efficiently.

Instead, Jason sheathed his badly chipped sword and clicked a bright blue button at the far left corner of his Overdrive keyboard.

Normally, the blue button activated special moves.

For the Hemoborn, it was their biological buffs - power-ups that dramatically increased the cyborg Mech's performance once pilots met certain in-game conditions. For example, the Bloodlust buff increased damage against low-health opponents.

Unfortunately, Jason couldn't use buffs - they weren't available to One Star Bosses.

Instead, the special weapons command activated the wristbands Jason had installed on the Red Minerva's arms. Much like the sword, the wristbands were nothing special. They were low-tier items that any One Star Boss could equip to their machine. The crude weapons depots carried a variety of basic utility items that they could quickly deliver into the Red Minerva's hands.

In this case, Jason brought out a pair of scissors.

The Red Minerva's clawed fingers looked rather ludicrous pushed through the tiny holes in the handle, but Jason had never cared about appearances. If using a pair of scissors was what it took to win, he'd use a pair of scissors.

As far as Jason could tell, it was the only way to circumvent his opponent's massive health bar and effectively unbreakable armor.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

He cut the exposed wires at the shoulder and then climbed down to the Crusher's enormous hand.

Once again, Jason steadily pulled and yanked until he revealed the vulnerable insides. He continued snipping furiously, gradually working his way around the machine.

On the surface, destroying the internal cables seemed foolish.

At this point, the enemy Mech was already completely and utterly immobilized - attacking the command wires wouldn't make a difference.

However, Jason's goal was to create an internal backlash in the Giga Mech's systems.

Even now that his opponent had fallen to the ground, Jason had no way of reliably piercing his foe's cockpit. He had to burn up the giant machine from the inside. After snipping enough wires, Jason would eventually reach a critical point where a single misplaced spark of electricity would send the Crusher burning down in flames.

It was just a matter of how long it'd take to get there.

He picked up a completely still finger and began to steadily slice away.

Peeling back the armor to slowly work away at the internal wires was a slow and arduous process. Every so often, Jason had to use the scissors to help pry the metal plating apart. Before long, the blades were covered with chips and dents.

Eventually, the scissors snapped, and Jason pulled an alternative pair from his wrist. He'd brought over a dozen in total.

He'd picked up the items virtually for free - the scissors were just a cheap gimmick item considered unviable in competitive play. They'd been created as part of an April Fool's Day event.

However, they were an excellent option to deal with Giga Mechs.

As Jason continued steadily working, he kept a close eye at the gauge he'd added to his screen.

DAMAGE DEALT: 2,491

That was another benefit to Jason's new strategy.

Recently, Jason's supervisor had announced that the One Star Boss who'd inflicted the most damage to opponents would receive a handsome bonus at the end of the year.

This was the perfect opportunity. His opponent's extreme durability meant that slowly chipping away at them was the only way to win.

In Jason's opinion, damage dealt was a very misleading way to measure Overdrive performance.

In theory, the Overdrive Corporation wanted to reward company pilots of any rating - whether they were One Star Bosses or celebrity Player Killers - who created engaging and exciting fights.

They wanted to hire pilots who constantly dueled opponents instead of using defensive strategies - they'd received complaints from fans about overly defensive gameplay.

However, plenty of aggressive pilots still won the game while inflicting a minimal amount of total damage. In fact, awarding players for dealing additional damage flipped the game's incentives and punished players for being efficient with their attacks.

Technically, the perfect win in Overdrive involved instantly killing the other player's pilot avatar with a precise stab through the cockpit.

However, such a strategy would deal almost zero damage to the enemy machine - all the parts would still be in perfect condition even though the pilot was dead.

Depending on the situation, it was possible for a player to inflict three to four times as much damage as their opponent while still losing the overall battle.

However, Jason had learned a long time ago that it was pointless to argue with the Overdrive Corporation's logic. Jason's supervisor, Ed Wass, only cared about making money and keeping the hidden bosses out of the public eye. Jason doubted the man had ever played a single game of Overdrive.

Instead of making a big fuss, Jason was going to exploit the rule to the maximum through his new "torture strategy" of inflicting as much damage as possible and grinding the Mech to pieces bit by bit.

There was an awkward silence as Jason steadily worked.

But after about ten minutes, it seemed like his opponent finally caught on to what was happening.

"What the hell?!?! Come on man!!!! Let me out!!!! Let me out!!!!! This sucks!!!! What is this??? Oh my god!!!! What is this!!!!"

Despite its rather grisly name, the torture strategy was rather innocuous.

It wasn't like the unconscious Mech could feel anything, and even then, Overdrive was just a virtual reality game. Jason took Overdrive very seriously, but even he knew that the torture strategy wasn't anything like torturing someone in real life.

Unfortunately, the torture strategy did force the enemy pilot to suffer from absurd boredom as Jason slowly and steadily shredded their machine...

The opponent continued their protests, but Jason ignored them and continued working.

The Red Minerva released a gentle wave of acid flame breath, melting through a particularly reinforced bit of armor. The scissors - now Jason's fourth pair - kept snipping, and the bizarre process continued.

"What are you doing?!?!?!?!?! End the game!!!! Let me out!!!! Let me out!!!!!"

Jason's opponent's voice grew higher and higher.

A pang of guilt briefly stilled Jason's hand.

His opponent sounded like a young kid.

His opponent's loud cries temporarily pushed Jason out of his concentrated mental state.

Head-on Overdrive battles were very easy for him, but the customer service part of being a One Star Boss was quite difficult. Technically, Jason had to pretend to be an AI at all times. He wasn't even allowed to talk back. All he could do was spam emotes.

Of course, that led to another difficulty.

Pretending to be an AI was quite difficult.

Would an AI even apologize for "torturing" its opponent?

Wouldn't they just ruthlessly continue the battle?

Jason ignored his opponent and kept going, electing not to spam the "Sorry" emote.

There was no real point, and besides, the sarcastic use of the in-game emotes had destroyed all meaning. Most people said "Sorry" to taunt their opponents further, not because they were actually sorry.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

The kid continued yelling.

"Let me go!!!!!! I want to play another game!!!! Let me go!!!!! I surrender!!!!!!"

Jason felt a little bad, but there was literally nothing he could do.

Neither of them could leave the match until Jason won. The boy simply shouting that he surrendered wasn't good enough. He needed to actually enter the surrender command, and it seemed like he didn't know how to do that.

On the other hand, Jason's Mech was incapable of surrendering. The Overdrive Corporation reasoned that an AI wouldn't blow themselves up, no matter how difficult the match became.

This slow and steady process was all either of them had.

If his opponent wanted to, he could also surrender by disconnecting his computer, but unfortunately, Jason couldn't suggest that option to them.

"Turn off your PC" was not an available emote option.

"Let me go!!!! I don't want to play anymore!!!!! My dad will hear about this!!!! I'm telling my dad who works at the Overdrive Corporation!!!!!"

Jason began cutting faster, actively hoping that the wires would burst. It sounded like the kid was crying. Unfortunately, it seemed like it would take at least another hour for Jason to blow up the enemy machine and get them out of here. The Sicko's crafters had made the frame a little too reliable.

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

"I'm telling my dad who works at the Overdrive Corporation!!!!!! Dad!!!! Dad!!!!! You need to destroy this map and fire the map designer!!!!!! The AI has gone crazy!!!!!"

Jason let out an amused chuckle.

Jason was glad he always muted his microphone.

Laughing in front of a crying kid would have made him look like a real asshole, but that phrase was just too funny.

A dad who worked at the Overdrive Corporation…

Jason had heard all about that one before.

That was the interesting thing about posing as an AI.

Players said all sorts of wild things to him, not realizing that someone was actually sitting there. Most of them, like this kid, just thought they were making verbal complaints to the map designer.

The Red Minerva's severe restrictions meant that Jason always had to win in a very roundabout manner, and none of his opponents liked losing in a bizarre fashion. He'd received plenty of verbal abuse and rage.

BZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT

Thump.

Jason's screen suddenly faded to black.

A very familiar angry knock resounded against Jason's cockpit, followed by an even more familiar angry voice.

"What the hell are you doing? Open up! Open up!"

Jason took a look at his black screen.

Shit.

Maybe that kid's dad really did work at the Overdrive Corporation...