Fight or Flight (9)

The only good news that Arnold can think of was the fact that due to Commander Lewis' intervention during his fight with Dominic, he now knew Dominic's esper ability. Lewis had also misled Dominic into believing that he had restored the communications for Arnold's team, leading Dominic by the nose and forcing him to return to the center of the arena in order to protect his comrades. Due to this situation, Lucas can pretty much predict where most of the people from the other team are located.

Elliott pulled out the holographic map in order for Lucas to better plan their future actions. Lucas zoomed in onto the center of the map and planted a yellow dot on the lonely building at the very middle, indicating the most likely position of their enemies.

"With Arnold's information, we can now assume without any worries that Dominic and one of his partners would be located back here, at the center building. Since we know that Jonah was with Dominic when they assulted you and Darius, we know that the person manning the jamming device at the center should either be Alex or Jammy, since Natasha was seen sniping us from a distance away." Lucas started explaining to the other members as usual, showing his intellectual talent.

"There is more than 80% chance that the manning person is Alex, since the role suits him best as a precision sniper that can kill anyone before they could even come close. Besides, I don't think Jammy is stupid enough to let himself be stuck in one place when he is the strongest person in their team. Therefore, assuming the distance from where Dominic and Arnold met with Lewis, we know that he will arrive at the center building within a few minutes."

Lucas placed three black holographic pawns onto the maps, indicating the locations of the three people that he identified. Then, he drew a single circle which indicated the predicted location of Jonah, with the captain being the only person whose location is unknown to them.

"Now that we know Jonah is the person isolated in the southern tip of the arena, we can pick him off before Dominic realizes that what Lewis said was a hoax and leaves the center building again. This is our only chance of evening out the playing field. Concurrently, as we head southwards, we can look for clues on where Nick has gone." Lucas spoke aloud as he planned the next actions of the team. He looked for Elliott for his approval. After seeing Elliott nodding in acknowledgement, Lucas stood up and ran out of the safehouse, heading southwards. Elliott followed behind with Arnold being the last one to react, running behind both of them.

*

While all these events were happening to the other members of the team, Nick found himself wandering around an unknown area within the arena. Unlike the terrain of the rest of the arena, the place he was currently located looked like the sight of a nuclear blast. There were rubbles everywhere, as far as Nick's eye could see. The rubble contained stone, cement and different types of metals that Nick could not identify. There were no buildings here, and from his field of vision, Nick did not see any buildings close by either.

Luckily, Nick had memorized the map and knew that he was currently located in the northeastern part of the arena, which was the only place within the map with such a unique terrain. He had completely no idea how he ended up here.

Initially, Nick had been camping and staring patiently into the scope of his sniper rifle, waiting for the people of the opposing team to arrive. He had stayed within the shadows of a rather tall building, which meant he had quite a good vantage point and could observe quite a large radius with his scope.

After laying on the floor for awhile, with both hands still on his sniple rifle, unmoving, he finally noticed some unusal movements.

At the edge of the field of vision of his scope, he found two unwelcomed visitors suddenly appearing from within one of the many dilapidated buildings in that area. They were walking leisurely outwards from the building and seemed to be enjoying each other's company from the looks of it, as they were conversing while they walk, one of them using exaggerated hand gestures. If it wasn't for the tense atmosphere surrounding the whole arena, Nick would have thought that those two people were simply taking a walk in the park instead of playing this simulated life-or-death game.

As the two people were still out of the maximum range of his sniper rifle, Nick could do nothing but watch as they moved slowly towards him, taking their time. Since they were still quite far away, Nick decided that there were no need to notify Arnold or Darius, as they were not a threat yet. Besides, they might head towards another area instead of towards them. He thought that if he told them that the enemies were coming, his teammates might become unnecesarily tense, especially Arnold, since Nick assumed that it was his first time engaging in such activities.

If Nick were cautious and actually tried to contact his two teammates, he would not be in his current situation, since he would instantly notice something wrong when he finds that his earpiece was not working. However, it was too late.

After taking a few twists and turns, the two people, who were close enough now that Nick recognized them from the hologram shown earlier that they were Dominic and Jonah, had almost reached the maximum range of his rifle. Nick prepared himself as he placed his index finger on the trigger and held his breath, preparing to fire at any moment. However, just when the digital scope indicated that Dominic had reached within range, he instantly found himself falling from the sky!

As he was originally laying down, he had no time to brace himself as he landed towards the rubble below. The strong impact instantly caused Nick to black out, even though he had subconsciously placed a thick layer of spiritual energy in front of him before landing. The energy could only protect his body from harm but not the shock caused from landing.

By the time he came to, almost an hour have passed.

Nick groaned when he woke up, feeling the heavy concussion that felt as though multiple needles were being nailed into his brain at the same time. First, he checked the flag which was located within the pocket located behind his pants. When he patted himself down and found that the flag was still there, he gave a sigh of relief.

Then, he checked his sniper rifle. Unfortunately, although the scope was still intact, the heat sensor that was connected to the rifle was smashed into a pulp upon impact. Due to the fact that the scope uses plastic lenses instead of glass, which as said before has a sky high price nowadays, it could still be used.

Nick started walking in the southwestern direction when he realized where he were. He patted the dust off from his body, carried the sniper rifle on his back and took out the handgun that hung around his waist for his own protection. Then he slowly walked through the rubble.

Due to the rocky terrain, Nick could not walk too fast, since that might cause him to unknowingly step on a sharp object and hurt himself or trip and fall. Of course, he could use spiritual energy to shield himself, but since he currently did not know if his enemies were nearby, he needed to conserve this energy. This slowed him down considerably. For the next hour, he was still walking through the heap of rubble before he could finally see a rather tall building at the end of his vision.

However, just when he had become overjoyed at the prospect of finally getting back to normal land, there seemed to be someone heading towards him from the east at a very fast speed. From the looks of it, the person did not seem to be very friendly either.

The person was closing in way too fast for Nick to take up his rifle and snipe him from afar, so he had no choice but to run in the opposite direction, using spiritual energy to boost his speed. Nick was completely unconfident in his close-quarter combat skills, since he spent most of his time training with a sniper rifle, and therefore would not dare to face a person head on. Especially since the opponent was from the lower levels and therefore had a higher Foundation Establishment.

However, it was also due to this fact that the opponent had no problems closing in on Nick even when Nick ran with his full speed. Nick ran towards the building that he saw just now, hoping that he would be able to get indoors and hide before his opponent arrives.