ZKZ Transactional Rifle

> "Primordial weapon attuned to the beating heart of the financial system."
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The **ZKZ Transactional Rifle** is a high-speed semi-automatic rifle. It is notable for dealing additional damage the more money the player has invested in the stock market. This scales with holdings, not shares.

This holds true regardless of who is holding it, so enemies equipped with this rifle can be made harmless by selling all the stocks that the player has invested in before meeting them.

## Usage

* With a decent amount of holdings, the ZKZ is still a powerful gun, capable of instakill headshots. It also boasts little to no bullet spread and recoil, similar to a pistol.
* The ZKZ's most notable feature is that its damage scales with stock market holdings, including body parts and fish. The more money the player have invested in the markets, the more damage it deals, and eventually the further away it can instagib enemies from.
* The ZKZ's damage caps out at exactly $1,000,000 in shares. When this number is reached, a high pitched sheen sound is overlaid over the normal firing sound of the weapon when the player hits something, and its gibbing radius is seemingly infinite. It's even able to gib the Undead enemy.
* The ZKZ has downsides, however. Firstly, it has no scope, laser sight, suppressor, or even armor piercing. This means that aiming it at longer ranges can be hard, enemies will be able to hear the gunfire, and, worst of all, it's completely ineffective against Shocktroopers, Golems, and Necromechs. The Zoom-N-Go Bionic Eyes will help with aiming, but there's nothing you can do with sound or armor penetration.
* Additionally, the weapon doesn't have the most ammunition, and there's no way to replenish it by default, as it's not located in any level (Aside from Cruelty Squad HQ and Trauma Loop). The Ammunition Gland or Load-Bearing Vest can be used to gain extra ammo.

## Location

Hidden in Cruelty Squad HQ. Requires cursed mode, Death. Go through the cursed door and make your way through the enemies up the stairs and to the intersection in the hall. Take the spiral staircase to the right, and move into the wooden maze, but just go straight ahead to the dead end. There is a secret door there, enter it and look up to find a door in the ceiling. You can go back to the back-left closet behind the lobby to pick up barrels, bring them back and stack them to enter the door, or use the Abominator, Grappendix, or Icaros Machine to jump through. Travel up along the bookshelves and platforms, past the Psycho. There will be a door in the wall, up against the ceiling, leading into another room with a unique Golem. Be very careful when you kill him, as he will drop two flechette grenades that obliterates anything in the room. Fall down a medium length shaft and kill the man with a rocket launcher, the ZKZ will be on a table behind him. It is possible to reach this point with only the Vertical Entry Device, but making it out will require an extremely precise jump without the aforementioned items: by kicking the floor and jumping at the same time to achieve a slightly higher jump, and then performing a wall-kick via Death Mode to make it back to the entrance door at the top of the shaft. It is recommended to have some form of fall damage mitigation if you intend to perform this technique, but you can simply perform another wall-kick to negate your fall damage if you can react fast enough.

Exiting through the entrance to the level will not cause the rifle to unlock, you must kill the target and get the second ending to add it to your arsenal. However, this will prove easy if you've prepared an adequate financial portfolio beforehand.

Trauma Loop features a unique Psycho known as the Ambassador who carries the rifle. Once he is killed, his ZKZ is yours to take for the remainder of the level. Another Ambassador with this weapon spawns on Hope Eradicated near the start of the level, on the Left Path overlooking the ladder that appears after using the book to open the secret passage/elevator.

## Trivia

* The ZKZ is based on the SKS semi-automatic rifle, but with bayonet missing.
* The ZKZ has an idle animation, where the protagonist rotates it in his hands. It is the same as the Balotelli Hypernova's animation.
* The best way to get enough money to fully power the weapon is to fish. In Casino Catastrophe, you can catch the Wheel of Fortune and Wheel of Pain, worth $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 respectively. Alternatively, you can fish in Office for the DOSFish, which is worth around $3,000,000.
* There is NPC dialogue in the game that references the ZKZ, saying, "I heard rumors of a weapon older than God that taps into the unbound potential of the financial world. Has to be bullshit."
* When the ZKZ is wielded by an enemy besides the Ambassador on Trauma Loop, the weapon's power is determined by the *player's* financial holdings, as if the player was wielding the weapon. This means if the player has a sufficient amount invested into the stock market, it will become an instant kill weapon in their hands as well. The Ambassador always deals instant kill damage with the ZKZ.
* In the maze which leads to the real weapon, there is a Fleshrat disguised as a ZKZ.

## Gallery

First-Person viewFirst-Person view during the idle animationFull ModelCruelty Squad ZKZ Rifle LocationVideo showing the location within the Cruelty Squad HQ