Chapter 36 - Point Nemo (part 5)

As I walk through the graveyard of loot boxes, I can feel a bone-chilling breeze through my spine. There must be not less than thirty boxes here. Bloodshed.

With the loot boxes, there also come lots of valuable items inside. I just go scavenger for a few minutes and I have sufficient components to fully upgrade my weapon, along with an amount of ammunition and healing items that can last me the whole game.

In the centre of the big laboratory, there is a big platform with a table on top which resembles a crafting bench. It lights up when I open my stats table. I approach the table and put my gun down. There is an arrow mark appearing in my vision, so I press on it.

- Let's see... Congrats on discovering this crafting bench. Please follow the instruction to upgrade your desired items.

I take out the wealth gap reduction module and place it on the bench, along with other modules and components. After the bench has registered the modules I have, from the ground next to me, a set of working tools appears and levitates in the air.

I pick one of them and follow the instruction to dismantle, insert and reassemble my weapons. The process is simplified so that any player with no technological background can use them, but sure, they take a long time.

After some struggles, I finally fully upgrade my sniper rifle and my assault rifle, as well as the drone I looted before. I put them back in my inventory and raise my shoulders. I can hear the sounds of my bone cracking, probably due to sitting down for a prolonged period. This is just unnecessarily realistic, though.

I open the mini-map and check for the next shrink of the safe battle zone.

- What the? How come there are only ten players left? I am sure that just ten minutes ago, it is fifty or more left. - Besides the safe battle zone that forces me to move out of this paradise of loot, the number of players catches me off guard.

I should try to get another kill or two soon. This is not how I am supposed to enjoy a game, even though it is a survival game.

I hold my assault rifle tightly and get out of the underground lab area through another exit. There are also loot boxes scattered along the way, which only disappear from my sight the moment I can see the skylight at the end of the exit tunnel.

By the way, my guns are now enhanced with eighty per cent wealth reduction, aim-assist and pinning effect, which will show the position of an enemy on the map three seconds after getting shot. My attacks can rival most of the rich players left in the battle, while my armour can handle maybe two or three more shots.

Now, the safe battle zone looks more like what one would expect to see on an island. The zone is split into half-land and half-sea terrain, with some small, interconnected mini-islands. The land part is a cliff and a beach, with a tropical forest landscape deeper into the island.

I climb up a sturdy tree and send my drone to survey the area. It is manual control, so I need to hide in the tree, above a person's vision, to protect myself. The drone has a camera, which is connected to a small tablet I looted and modified in the lab. As the drone is scouting the mini-island cluster, I see something moving.

I zoom in. There is a person, armed with two to three layers of armour, patiently aiming somewhere. I steer my drone in the direction of the vision of the camping sniper.

He is looking at the beach, where a player is moving, jumping, and sliding like a game character. I will attack the camping sniper first.

My position is about two kilometres away from the sniper, so I climb down the tree to get to the cliff, which is closer to the island cluster than the forest area. It only takes me two minutes to reach the cliff and find a well-hidden grassy field. I lie down and let the tall glass leaves of different shades of green cover my body. I switch to the sniper rifle. Photon shots travel at lightspeed so they are mostly unaffected by the gravitational field of the Earth, and I can just neglect the bullet drop. I scope in and rotate the knob to magnify the vision to twenty times, the maximum magnification allowed. I manage to barely see a dot that looks like the head of the sniper.

After the aim-assist function has redirected my barrel to the correct angle, I take a deep breath and press the trigger. A photon bullet emerges from my barrel, and immediately, I see a white hit mark, as expected. The only difference is that for this time, half of the Force Field of the sniper has been damaged.

I quickly pull the bolt to load another round onto the firing chamber, and just before the sniper is quick enough to bend down, the next shot has disabled the Force Field.

When there are only ten players left, all of the self-regenerating items will be brought to full charge, but they cannot recharge by themselves anymore. Without an energy ball to supply power, this person's armour is effectively rendered useless.

Suddenly, through my scope vision, a bright laser beam from somewhere reaches the island I am aiming at. The number of players drops to nine.

And someone steals my kill.

That is not important. This means that my spot has been exposed. I quickly stand up and retreat to the forest, just in time before a trace of burnt gunshots is drawn right behind my back like a long tail. I hide in the forest.

I check the mini-map, only to realise that there are only seven players left. One of the killed players has fallen somewhere near the mini-island cluster, while the other one is nobody other than the player who loitered around the beach. And by the same gunshot that comes from the mysterious player.

I retract my drone which is hiding safely at a high altitude. It has already filmed the whole safe battle zone from above when I check the memory.

- According to the video footage, the traces of the photon shots all converge to this shelter somewhere closer to the forest. I can do something. - I use my finger to sketch some lines and annotate on the mini-map.

The safe zone is shrinking the last time. I can hear relentless gunshots from the cluster area, as people who hide in the bushes like ninjas have to retreat to the empty beach area. I embrace the opportunity and take out my sniper rifle. As I see blood splattering nearer to the beach, I press the trigger.

- Yes! Finally, another kill. - I feel greatly elated deep inside, although it is just a kill-stealing scenario and the rich players out there are too busy dealing with each other and are not aware of any other threat.

I pull the bolt and aim at the beach again, but the massacre has already finished. We are left with three players.

I retreat further to the forest, in the direction of the beach, where the mysterious player is likely there...

... to encounter a survivor, fully geared, also lurking in the forest like me, and both of us are in the middle of an empty circle surrounded by trees.

I leap backwards and throw the Compact Shield at him. It blooms into a fully undeformable shield, and with the upgrade, the bloom comes with a blinding and deafening flash.

Since the front is blocked, I flank to his left side and start firing my assault rifle. However, this player also looks like the experienced type, and he has time to react to my surprise shield attack and make his way out of my stream of laser shots, only receiving one or two shots. He does not have a Force Field, so his health bar and his armour are dropped by fifteen per cent. That is the wealth gap reduction module for you.

The player then snaps his fingers, and two drones miraculously appear behind his back, equipped with energy orb launchers. They start firing.

I flick my hand to take out a sphere from the inventory and squeeze it. A burst of electromagnetic pulse penetrates the air, which fortunately disables the two drones and neutralises the orbs. I take the offensive advantage again by charging at the player with the photon bayonet.

I can hear the sound of the burning of metal, as the heat melts the arm bracers of the player. He jumps back. The burning effect has reduced his health to eighty per cent.

He retaliates with his double submachine gun attached to an electric tank that provides infinite ammunition until the energy runs out. I use my agility advantage and swing myself out of the gunshot and try to stay away from the player's vision.

Yet, whenever I try to approach him, he jumps away. It is just annoying at this point.

Suddenly, my senses tell me that a bullet is going to be fired somewhere. It would be weird if the gunshots do not attract this third player's attention.

As expected, the moment I make a ducking move to avoid the lateral sweep from the submachine guns, I see a bright and intense ray swiping through the player's head. At that very moment, the ray is so bright that I can see the X-ray image of his head.

Although it is just a beam of photons, the momentum packed within the extremely concentrated beam deals enough impulse to knock the player and make him lose hold.

I just wait for this one-of-a-time luck. I use all of my strength to kick him in his belly and send him flying. After the almost lethal hit, his health bar has dropped to five per cent. I quickly fire all of my bullets left in the magazine, and right when I hear a tick from the gun which tells me that I need to reload, a kill mark appears in front of me, signalling my third kill, even though it is still a kill steal.

Wait a minute... It is just generally impossible to dodge something which is flying towards me at three hundred million metres per second. This shot is deliberately aimed to hit my opponent.

Which only means...

As soon as my thoughts reach this point, I feel a scorching beam piercing through my head. It is so bright, that it ignites the interior of my eyes to the point that they become a light source. The last thing I manage to see with my eyes is my health bar, which slowly drains to zero from a hundred per cent, or maybe the slowness is what I perceive.