I crashed through the thicket, my body turned sideways so that my left side absorbed the brunt of my passage. The sharp branches slashed at my naked forearms, but overall, my character took much less damage now that I was dressed. Behind me, the gunshots still rang out, but the rounds flew wider and wider as I ducked around and through the trees, getting farther and farther from the technical.
I flinched in pain as my right foot sank in a pothole, twisting my ankle. Thrown off the balance, I toppled forward. Grunting, I rose on my elbows. My ankle was throbbing and very realistically at that. Also, my character had taken about five percent of damage. Between having hurt my ankle and the branches having slashed at me, my HP had reduced by about twenty-five percent.
My HUD always stayed before my eyes, moving only when I turned my head. So I looked at the Health bar and numerals popped up in my HUD.
> 77/300
I scanned my surroundings and noticed a big tree, its overhanging limbs forming a canopy. The tree was perched on a small knoll with several roots partly exposed. Two of them crisscrossed each other, creating a three-foot space between them before vanishing into the earth. It could provide darn good cover.
The .50-caliber machine gun was still raking the thicket, the slugs getting closer to my position, kicking up small fountains of dirt as they hit the earth.
Getting to my feet, I limped toward the tree, slid between the two roots, and crouched down. My injured ankle still caused painful sensations, but I ignored the discomfort.
The tree and the two roots not only hid me from the sight of the two players, but they also offered good cover. The stray slugs tore into the tree, shredding the bark, but none of them hit me. I was now glad for toppling over. Had it not been for that, I might have not paid attention to the tree.
The crack of gunfire ceased. My curiosity having gotten the better of me, I eased my head out and risked a hasty peek over the root on my left. My eyes made out the pickup truck with the swivel-mounted .50-caliber machine gun nearby. The car with its engine idling sat near the thicket. The player in the back held an ammunition belt in his hands, feeding the cartridges into the machine gun.
A thought crossed my mind that I probably should get out of here while the player was reloading his big weapon. Yet it was too risky, so I decided to sit tight instead.
It was real good thinking on my part because it wasn’t long before the player opened up again, the machine gun belching flame and lead. I ducked my head, getting back in cover. The slugs saturated the foliage once more, ripping leaves, snapping branches, and shredding tree bark.
My ears made out some sounds. Then I realized it was the padding of bare feet on the ground. Some player was somewhere nearby. He or she had to be real close to my position, otherwise I would never be able to hear his or her footsteps over the roar of the machine gun.
Before I could do anything, the player popped up above the roots. It was a bare-chested man. He must have just discovered this place too and wanted to hide himself in the space between the two roots where I was crouching. He was about to slide inside when he noticed me and froze.
I could’ve gunned him down to get a hundred more experience points. Yet seeing as I was down to only five shots now, I wasn’t all that keen on wasting one. There was no telling how long it would take before I found extra mags. The five bullets I had in my pistol would really come in handy if I encountered an armed player.
“Get outta here,” I said pointing my pistol at the player’s bare chest.
I didn’t have to say it twice. The man whirled around and took off, his footsteps receding quickly.
I was well aware that my being low on ammo had just been an excuse for my unwillingness to whack the shirtless man. The real reason that I hadn’t killed him had nothing to do with my being short of bullets. It was just that I hadn’t wanted to waste the man. Sure, I had stiffed people in the real world without having second thoughts, but this game was an altogether different matter. In real life, all the people I had shot dead were criminals who threatened my beloved ones or me. In this game, however, most people were not criminals but ordinary people who had decided to play the game only because they desperately needed money for some reason. I was sure of that.
Yet I knew very well that I had to stifle my emotions. They could get me killed at some point.
The rattling of the machine gun ceased again. Either the player was reloading the weapon again or he had already killed everyone in sight. I straightened up a little to peek over the roots and saw the technical still sitting near the stand of the trees. The driver was unwilling to get into the thicket. Either he was afraid of getting stuck in the thick foliage or of being ambushed by players that might have survived the onslaught his partner had just unleashed on the thicket.
Anyway, after reloading the machine gun, the player in the back peered into the trees for a few seconds without opening fire. Then he suddenly shouted something, pointing to his left. Then the engine revved as the car started to turn around in a tight circle.
I ducked back in just in case. The sound of the motor faded away. The car was clearly moving away. I craned my neck for a better look and peeked out of the roots. The truck was moving away from my position at a fast clip. Perhaps the two players were chasing another player they had spotted. Anyway, it was my chance to finally get out of there.
After climbing out, I consulted the map and took off running through the trees toward the building. I ran as fast as I could. My stamina was draining fast. It wasn’t long before the stamina bar got empty and my movement speed got reduced from a sprint to a brisk jog. A thought entered my mind that perhaps I should use one of the two skill points I had recently been given to increase my total stamina after getting to some relatively safe place.
Finally, I burst out of the thicket and saw a one-story wood house in the middle of a large clearing. Since I had spent too much time in the thicket, I was sure that someone had already looted the place. Yet after getting in the house, I discovered a submachine gun lying in the middle of the floor. The gun looked exactly like Heckler & Koch MP-5. I fixed my gaze on the weapon and its stats popped up in my HUD.
> Name: Punisher
> Type: Submachine gun
> Rarity: Rare (blue)
> Level Requirement: 2
> Damage: 75
> Accuracy: 65
> Fire rate: 90
> Magazine size: 35
> Special quality: The selector switch could be thrown to the 3-round-burst mode to increase the submachine gun’s accuracy by 15 percent.
I slid my pistol into my waistband near the navel, leaving the but free. After picking up the subgun and hanging it around my neck by the sling so that the muzzle pointed down, I checked the rest of the house to find a few extra magazines for the submachine gun. I also discovered a black tactical vest in a wooden closet. After putting it on and zipping it up, I slid the mags into the pockets on my vest.
I then looked out a window and scanned the area surrounding the house. All seemed peaceful and quiet. Apparently, no player was nearby. I decided to use this respite to assign the two skill points. I was about to bring up the Character Menu when a distant noise caught my attention. It was clearly coming from the outside. After walking up to the window again, I looked out.
The pickup up truck with the machine gun in the back was driving along the beach toward the house I was in.
What the heck were they doing, I thought. Why the heck had they decided to come here? Had they spotted me? Or just decided to check the house?
Yet I didn’t have time to seek answers to these questions. Had to focus on the matter at hand––the technical approaching my way. The gunman in the back had already swiveled the machine gun around to angle the business end of it toward the wooden house. The two players were clearly aware of a player hiding inside the building.
Before I could do anything, the machine gun boomed to life. I dove to the floor, scuffing my elbows in th
e process as .50-caliber slugs shattered the window and burned through the room above my head. Wood cracked and splintered as the .50-caliber rounds penetrated the walls.
I hastily pulled back the bolt of the submachine gun, chambering the first round, and flicked the selector switch from the safety position to the 3-round-burst mode. I crawled on my stomach across the room toward another window as the machine gun kept on raking the house, punching bullets in the walls and shattering the windows, showering me with wood chips and glass fragments.
I got to another window, sat up with my back pressed against the wall, and waited. When the gunman swept the machine gun to the left, away from my current position, I leaped to my feet, spun, and looked out the window. The pickup truck was still bearing down on the house. I stuck the stock under my armpit, pointed the gun in the direction of the vehicle, and fired a 3-round-burst.
I allowed the gun to rise with the recoil. The first two bullets pinged off the hood and the third one hit the windshield, punching a hole through the glass. Yet I must have missed the driver, otherwise I would have gotten experience points for wounding him.
The gunman swept the machine gun to direct fire at me. I instantly dived for the floor and crawled to another window on all fours. Getting up and leaning around the window frame, I leveled my subgun at the approaching truck and triggered another 3-round burst at the windshield of the technical. The driver thrashed and screamed over the clatter of the machine gun and the roar of the engine.
> +50 exp
> +50 exp
I had wounded him twice, but he was still alive. Each player had three hundred hit points at the beginning of the game. The damage attribute of my gun was 75, so I had dealt 150 HP of damage to him. If the driver hadn’t assigned any skill points to increase his total health capacity yet, then I needed to hit him two more times to finish him off.
Pressing the stock to my right shoulder, I pumped another trio of rounds into the truck. My bullets tore into the car’s grill and the truck swerved as the driver briefly lost control. I stitched the remaining bullets into the vehicle, hoping some of them finish the driver off.
The gunman started to fire in my direction again. I jumped away from the window, dropped to the floor, and rolled, finding cover behind a refrigerator as the .50-caliber bullets saturated the air again. I pressed the release button, dropping the spent mag, removed a fresh one from a pocket on my vest, and slammed it home.
The crack of fire ceased. The gunman must have emptied the magazine. Taking the opportunity, I dashed back to the window and dumped half a magazine into the vehicle’s windshield. Some of my shots were off due to the submachine gun’s accuracy. I could hear the sounds of the bullets peppering the cab and pinging off the hood. Still, most of the bullets hit the windshield and it soon exploded under the onslaught.
Ducking his head to avoid the flying glass fragments, the driver yanked on the steering wheel in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. Yet he was too late.
Some of my bullets found their mark.
> +50 exp
> +50 exp
> +100 exp for the kill
Out of control, the pickup truck veered sharply to the left and smashed into a trunk of a nearby tree, both front fenders and the hood crumpling. The dead driver was propelled forward, sailing through the gaping windshield to slam against the tree with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. The player in the back was hurled out, dropping headfirst to the ground.
I lifted my gun to eye level and started firing at the truck’s gas tank, trying to blow the vehicle up. I knew that in real life bullets started gasoline fires not as often as they did in action flicks. Yet it wasn’t real life. It was a virtual reality video game.
The gas tank ruptured, flames shot out, and in the next moment, a fireball engulfed the pickup truck. The already damaged vehicle exploded with a powerful whoosh, rolling off heat. Coal-black smoke billowed upward from the bonfire of gas, rubber, and oil. The nearby bushes and low-hanging branches caught immediately, choking this section of the thicket with dense smoke.
The explosion sent fragments of metal, glass, and gory pieces of the body of the dead driver flying in every direction. The concussion smacked into the gunman who had just gotten to his feet and smacked into him with tremendous force, ripping his body apart and killing him instantly. A huge column of black smoke wafted skyward from the demolished pickup truck.
> +200 exp for the explosion kill
> Congrats! You’ve just leveled up to level 3! You’ve got 3 skill points to assign.
Finally, everything went quiet.
Chapter Three
My current level was 3 and I had three skill points to allot into some skills. First off, I surveyed the surrounding terrain, ensuring nobody was in the vicinity of the wooden house.
I then brought up the Character Menu. The Skill Tree popped up in my HUD. It consisted of several branches, of which only the level 1 branch––the top one––was unlocked. I examined all five skills from the first branch.
> Level 1 Branch:
> Skill #1
> Name: Health Capacity 1
> Description: Increases total Health by 10%
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #2
> Name: Stamina Capacity 1
> Description: Increases total Stamina by 25%
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #3
> Name: Movement Speed 1
> Description: Increases Movement Speed by 5%
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #4
> Name: Damage Resistance 1
> Description: You take 5% less damage
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #5
> Name: Health Regeneration 1
> Description: Your Health regenerates over time at the rate of 10% a minute
> Cost: 1 skill point
All the five skills from the level 1 branch seemed extremely important to me. Yet I had only three skill points to assign. Even Stamina Capacity was a very useful skill because a player’s initial Stamina capacity sucked. I remembered running through the trees not so long ago. My Stamina had drained way too fast, which resulted in getting my sprint reduced to a jog. It sucked. It could’ve gotten me killed.
After giving the matter some thought, I decided to learn Health Regeneration 1 first. This skill seemed the most vital to me. After I learned it, the next branch of the Skill Tree got unlocked, giving access to the other five skills.
I checked out the level 2 branch skills.
> Level 2 Branch:
> Skill #1
> Name: Damage 1
> Description: You do 5% more damage
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #2
> Name: Sneaky 1
> Description: Your footsteps produce 25% less noise and you are also less visible to other players when hidden somewhere or seen from afar
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Skill #3
> Name: Quick Draw
> Description: Decreases the time it takes you to draw and holster handguns by 50% and also increases your switching weapons by 25%
> Cost: 2 skill points
> Skill #4
> Name: Health Capacity 2
> Description: Increases total Health by 20%
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Health Capacity 2 if you do not have Health Capacity 1 unlocked
> Skill #5
> Name: Stamina Capacity 2
> Description: Increases total Stamina by 50%
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Stamina Capacity 2 if you do not have Stamina Capacity 1 unlocked
I decided to increase my total Health, so I first unlocked Health Capacity 1 from the first branch of the Skill Tree and then spent the third––and the last––skill point to unlock Health Capacity 2. Out of the corner of the eye, I noti
ced my HP bar lengthen somewhat. My having learned a skill from the second branch unlocked the third one. Although I didn’t have any more unused skill points, I decided to check the new five skills anyway.
Yet before I could do that, a message popped up before my eyes.
> Be advised that the Circle collapse is imminent. Relocate to the safe zone.
Only then did I spot a few messages in my log.
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 04min59sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 03min59sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 02min59sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 01min59sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 00min59sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 00min29sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 00min19sec…
> Be advised that the Circle will begin to collapse in 00min09sec…
The Last Player Standing: A Dystopian LitRPG Novel Page 5