It wasn’t long before the roar of vehicle engines’ came from the outside. We dashed over to the windows and looked out. Lots of vehicles came to a stop in front of the house and even more were coming in. We ducked under the windows as some of the players spotted us and a volley of fire erupted outside, the storm of bullets tearing into the living area. Windows shattered and the curtains danced as they were shredded.
Crouching, Jennifer scrambled across the floor to me and said, “Jason, I don’t think we’ll survive this.”
I didn’t like her mood. I didn’t like it at all.
“Let’s just do our best to get through this,” I said as another window above us exploded in a shower of thousand glass shards.
“Yeah, sure,” Jennifer yelled over the roar of fire. “Just know I love you.”
I had barely opened my mouth to answer my girlfriend when the fire suddenly ceased for some reason. Jennifer and I exchanged puzzled glances and then we rose slightly to peek over the bottom edge of the broken panel window above us.
The swarm of the players parted to let one player step forward. He then hefted what looked like an RPG-7 onto his shoulder and pointed the deadly rocket launcher at the building.
Jennifer and I leaped to our feet and darted over to the bar. Just as we slid across it and dropped to the floor behind the bar, the fireball blew the front door off its hinges into the room like a freight train. Shrapnel and jagged chunks of wood lanced through the air. Liquor bottles exploded, spaying us with glass.
We rose above the edge of the bar, which provided us with an angle on the entrance door. We brought up our weapons and lined up the iron sights on the burning doorway. Our ears were still ringing from the concussion and our bodies were bleeding from a number of minor lacerations. But overall, we didn’t sustain severe wounds. Probably we were going to die in this place, but we sure as heck weren’t going to give up without a fight.
The hostiles started to charge through the ruined entrance door.
Chapter Ten
Surprisingly, we managed to knock the attackers back. We then darted over to the windows and started pouring lead into the players as they returned fire.
The fight seemed to go on forever. Jennifer and I fire at the hostiles, healed themselves, threw grenades, ducked under the windows, then rose from cover again. Every now and then, the attackers managed to get in the house only to be knocked back again. I had lost count of the number of players I had taken out.
At some point, both Jennifer and I reached the level twenty, which was the max level in this game. My girlfriend suggested we take turns assigning the skill points and I agreed. Jennifer swept her assault rifle back and forth in covering fire as I examined the Skill Tree.
I had five skill points to assign. I quickly looked over the tenth branch.
> Level 10 Branch:
> Skill #1
> Name: Knock Them Down 3
> Description: Shooting a sprinting player in the legs gives you a 15% chance of knocking him or her down
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Knock Them Down 3 if you do not have Knock Them Down 2 unlocked
> Skill #2
> Name: Deadeye 3
> Description: Reduces recoil by 15% and increases your accuracy by 15% when you aiming down the iron sights
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Deadeye 3 if you do not have Deadeye 3 unlocked
> Skill #3
> Name: Tactical Movement
> Description: No movement penalty for using the iron sights
> Cost: 3 skill points
> Skill #4
> Name: Demolitionist
> Description: Increases effective radius of all explosives by 25%
> Cost: 2 skill points
> Skill #5
> Name: Second Chance
> Description: Decreases the damage you take when being beyond the Circle in the Red Zone by 50%
> Cost: 3 skill points
Although I had initially wanted to learn the trio of the Deadeye skills, I decided to spend my skill points on some other skills. I learned the Vampire and the Stability skills from the eighth and ninth branches respectively.
> Name: Vampire
> Description: You heal yourself 5% of Health every time you do damage to another player
> Cost: 2 skill points
> Name: Stability
> Description: Increases the damage you deal by 30%, your accuracy by 20%, and your reloading speed by 10% while crouching and unmoving
> Cost: 3 skill points
These two skills seemed to be very extremely useful in the current circumstances.
It took me no more than ten seconds to examine the Skill Tree and learn the new skills. Once I was done, it was my turn to cover Jennifer while she assigned her skill points.
She learned the trio of the Damage skills. The last skill point went to unlock the Demolitionist skill. The first skills increased the overall damage Jennifer dealt and the other one increased the effective radius of her explosives. With these skills learned, her grenade launcher was even more powerful.
Although we were outnumbered and outgunned, Jennifer and I started to actually win the fight. We had wasted so many players both of us had already reached the max level while most of our enemies were still level thirteen or fourteen.
Not only were we now able to keep the hostile team at bay, but we also managed to push them back from the house. I was starting to think that we were going to actually win the fight, but then something unpleasant transpired––we ran out of bullets.
Sure, due to us having killed some of the players inside the house, there was some ammo scattered across the floor, but it wasn’t enough to kill the remaining players. Moreover, we had been able to hold against the hostiles mostly because of Jennifer’s grenade launcher. Now that we had no more grenades, we didn’t have any advantage over the enemy.
Once the players realized we were low on ammo, they started to really push us. They advanced on the building, spraying the living area with every weapon they had.
We lay on the floor as bullets kept coming through the windows and burning through the air above us.
“We gotta get outta here,” I yelled to be heard over the roar of fire.
“The moment we leave the house, we’re dead,” Jennifer said.
“What do we do then?”
Jennifer said nothing. She didn’t have an answer to the question.
I was racking my brain, trying to figure out the way to get out of this place alive. Yet no bright idea occurred to me. Probably, it was time to brace ourselves for meeting our death.
Jennifer asked something, but I didn’t catch it over the din of the gunfire.
“What?”
“The bag you’ve taken from the supply crate,” Jennifer yelled. “What’s in there?”
I had totally forgotten about the bag. I reached for it and undone the zipper. Yet we were disappointed to find only a few smoke grenades and two visors to see through smoke.
But a moment later, an idea occurred to me.
“We can use it to cover our escape.”
“It’s too risky, Jason.”
“You got other ideas?”
“No.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Jennifer hesitated for a moment. Then she agreed. We put the visors on and started pulling the pins and tossing the smoke grenades out the window above us. We waited a few seconds, then peeked out the window. Dense smoke swirled through the air outside the house, but thanks to our visors, we could clearly see through the smoke. Figures moved in the smoke, blinded players sweeping their guns back and forth, triggering bursts in every direction and accidentally killing one another.
We darted out of the building and raced through the swirling smoke toward the nearest car that wasn’t too battered. It was a pickup truck. We opened the doors and slid in the cab, J
ennifer in the passenger seat, I behind the wheel. The engine was still running.
I pressed the gas pedal and started to back up. Once we were out of the smoke, we took off our visors. When the road widened enough to perform a bootlegger maneuver, I wrenched the steering wheel to the side, bringing the car around in a tight circle. The car was now pointed in the direction I had reversed in. I worked the clutch and put the car into gear. The tires gripped the pavement and the pickup truck lurched forward.
I whipped the wheel back and forth swinging the car around a series of hairpin bends. The pickup truck was getting farther and farther from the building. I cast glances in the rearview mirror to see if the players followed us. Yet they never did for some reason. Finally, the road straightened out and I floored it. The building soon disappeared in the distance.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why don’t they chase us? Sure, they couldn’t see us in that smoke, but they must have heard us driving away.”
“Probably by the time they got to their cars and found the way out of the smoke, we had already been out of sight and they drove in the wrong direction.”
“Don’t forget about Vic Morgan watching us. He always knows where we are and is constantly in touch with his team. So why hasn’t he told them which way we went?”
As if in response to my question, a message popped up in the log. Contrary to my expectation, it wasn’t from Vic Morgan.
“Hi there,
My name is Rick Dillon and I am one of the Senior Moderators of the Battle Royale Online game. On behalf of all the developers and the moderators, I apologize for the horrific experience you've just lived through. Let me just say, the hacker known as ‘Vic Morgan’ has been dealt with. He won’t bother you again. The players who have been attacking you have just been told that they have been tricked into hunting you down by a hacker. So they no longer play as a team.
By way of apology, our team has just dropped a supply crate for you guys. Check your map to see where the crate is. Except for you two, Jason and Jennifer, no player has received the notification about the supply drop and nobody can see it on the map. However, be advised that some player can find the shipping crate by chance.
Best regards,
Rick Dillon.”
“I’ve just received a message from the moderators,” Jennifer said.
“Me too.”
We were elated by the news and headed for the supply drop right away. We discovered it untouched. After disassembling the crate, we found level 20 body armor, level 20 combat helmets, a legendary level 20 shotgun, and a legendary level 20 assault rifle with an under-barrel grenade launcher.
> Name: Destroyer
> Type: Shotgun
> Rarity: Legendary (orange)
> Level Requirement: 20
> Damage: 550
> Accuracy: 75
> Fire rate: 55
> Magazine size: 15
> Special quality: This shotgun had a 50% chance of placing a debuff Bleeding on a player
> Name: Hunter
> Type: Assault rifle
> Rarity: Legendary (orange)
> Level Requirement: 20
> Damage: 155
> Accuracy: 95
> Fire rate: 95
> Magazine size: 50
> Special quality: The selector switch could be thrown to the 3-round-burst mode to increase the assault rifle’s accuracy by 25 percent
There were also lots of ammo, grenades, and auto-injectors inside the crate. We changed into the level 20 body armor, put on the helmets, and stowed the consumables away in our bags.
Since Jennifer had the Demolitionist skill, we decided that she would take the Hunter assault rifle and I would take the Destroyer shotgun.
I put some of the shotguns shells into the cartridge holders on my utility belt around my waist. I then put the rest of the shells in my bag. Jennifer slid the extra magazines for the assault rifle into the pockets on her tactical vest.
This done, we get back into the pickup truck and drove off.
Soon we came across a one-story house and decided to check it. Sure enough, the house had already been looted.
The fight with Vic Morgan’s team had left us exhausted. Not physically, of course, but rather mentally. So we decided to stay at this place for some time to catch our breath.
We sat on a couch in the living room and just rested for a few minutes. I decided to look over my Build and brought up the Skill Tree. When I scrolled down to the tenth––the final––branch, I discovered a new skill just below the level 10 branch.
> Name: Skill Reset
> Description: It allows you to undo any skills to get back the skill points to assign them to other skills.
> Cost: This skill gets unlocked automatically after reaching the max level, which is twenty.
The last time I had assigned the skill points, we had held out against Vic Morgan’s team. Being under the violent onslaught, I hadn’t had much time to examine the Skill Tree carefully, which was why I had overlooked Skill Reset.
I told Jennifer about the just discovered Skill Reset, but she was happy with her Build and didn’t want to change anything. As for me, I decided to tune up my Build slightly.
After examining the Skill Tree once more, I undid the Vampire and the Stability skills, which I had learned while in the building under siege.
The Vampire skill healed you somewhat every time you dealt damage to another player. This skill had been very useful when we had been surrounded by lots of players on Vic Morgan’s team. However, I wasn’t sure if it would be as useful under normal circumstances. I had undone the Stability skill for the same reason. It increased your damage output, accuracy, and reloading speed. However, it only worked when you were unmoving. So it was useful only under certain circumstances, such as when Jennifer and I had held out against Vic Morgan’s team in that building because we were mostly were unmoving.
After undoing these two skills, I had gotten five skill points back. Since all the ten branches of the Skill Tree were unlocked, I could learn any skill I wanted.
After giving the matter some thought, I decided to unlock the three skills that I had been going to unlock earlier on. So I spent three of them on Deadeye 1, Deadeye 2, and Deadeye 3 from the level 8 branch, level 9 branch, and level 10 branch respectively.
> Name: Deadeye 1
> Description: Reduces recoil by 5% and increases your accuracy by 5% when you aiming down the iron sights
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Name: Deadeye 2
> Description: Reduces recoil by 10% and increases your accuracy by 10% when you aiming down the iron sights
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Deadeye 2 if you do not have Deadeye 1 unlocked.
> Name: Deadeye 3
> Description: Reduces recoil by 15% and increases your accuracy by 15% when you aiming down the iron sights
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Deadeye 3 if you do not have Deadeye 3 unlocked.
I assigned the remaining two skill points to the Damage 1 and the Damage 2 skills from the level 2 branch and level 5 branch respectively.
> Name: Damage 1
> Description: You do 5% more damage
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Name: Damage 2
> Description: You do 10% more damage
> Cost: 1 skill point
> Note: You cannot learn Damage 2 if you do not have Damage 1 unlocked
With these two skills unlocked, I would do 15% more damage even while moving, as opposed to doing 30% more damage while unmoving, which the Stability skill had offered.
I then reviewed my Build and my Statistics one last time to make sure I was happy with them.
Level 1 Branch
> Name: Health Capacity 1
> Description: Increases total Health by 10%
> Name: Damage Resistance 1
> Name: Health Regeneration 1
> Description: Your Health regenerates over time at the rate of 10% a minute
Level 2 Branch
> Name: Damage 1
> Description: You do 5% more damage
> Name: Health Capacity 2
> Description: Increases total Health by 20%
Level 3 Branch
> Name: Damage Resistance 2
> Description: You take 10% less damage
Level 4 Branch
> Name: Damage Resistance 3
> Description: You take 15% less damage
> Name: Health Capacity 3
> Description: Increases total Health by 30%
Level 5 Branch
> Name: Health Regeneration 2
> Description: Your Health regenerates over time at the rate of 15% a minute
> Name: Dodge 1
> Description: You have got a 5% chance of avoiding being hit by enemies’ bullets
Level 6 Branch
> Name: Health Regeneration 3
> Description: Your Health regenerates over time at the rate of 20% a minute
> Name: Damage 2
> Description: You do 10% more damage
The Last Player Standing: A Dystopian LitRPG Novel Page 18