by Arthur Stone
He had to act quickly, while their attention was focused here. Cheater moved to the other end of the floor and climbed higher, through a utility duct without an alarm. His enemies either had not brought enough alarm systems along with them or had simply neglected some of the ways through. What was important was that no one could approach their position by stealthy means.
Cheater was unable to move through the hallway without triggering alarms. He had no such ability. But he did have others.
With Flash of Omniscience, he illuminated his opponents. Then, he waited for one of the three, who was supposed to control the hallway he was now within, to turn back towards the direction of his chat messages.
He sidestepped into the hallway and raised his pistol. He had attached the silencer in advance and loaded subsonic rounds into the magazine. The distance to the first enemy was about forty yards—too far for such a weapon.
He hoped his Accuracy would hold. It did.
Cheater managed seven shots before he ducked back around the corner to take cover from return fire. Then, he considered his effectiveness.
His opponents were equipped with body armor, and one sported a serious police helmet. However, his pistol was upgraded with many priceless mods. Only a strong defensive barrier could stop his rounds. So the barricade, true to form, was the main obstacle.
One was down, or at least so badly hurt that he did not move. Another was shot in the arm and the neck, and was engaged in trying to urgently stop the bleeding. He seemed to be failing at that task, and so he would probably soon settle down next to the first.
The third was still up. He was the one drilling burst after burst down the hall. Bullets flew uselessly past Cheater's position. It was not clear whether he was hurt or not, but there was something unnatural, twisted even, about his posture. Cheater might wait a little longer so that he could succumb to his wounds. But there was no time. The second group would arrive at an unpredictable moment. Assuming Benz wasn’t bluffing, he was already in the building—once he heard the news of the attack, he might pick up speed and arrive in minutes.
Cheater did not move to any of the utility ducts. Nor did he try to use the chats as bait. Those would take too much time. The layout of the unfinished building made it possible to quickly move to another hallway. From there, he repeated his trick.
First, Flash of Omniscience. Once the last enemy standing had his back turn, he could round the corner and shoot twice.
He hit, and well. Small fragments of shrapnel flew off of the highlighted figure. It looked like blood splashed out of his face, along with scraps of knocked out flesh. Considering that Cheater was aiming for the back of the head, it was a bad situation for the man.
He rushed forward. Damn the alarms, damn it all. The enemies had been defeated. Only wounded remained, and if Omniscience was any indication, they were no longer in fighting condition.
Cheater was slightly mistaken with the latter assumption. One of the wounded managed to turn and throw up his arm, immediately firing without aiming. His Accuracy was not high enough, though, and he missed as Cheater zigzagged. Or maybe it was the fact that he had been down a leg since the very beginning of the battle. Thanks to Choppa.
The crippled man did not manage to shoot a second time. Cheater crossed over the low barricade and unloaded the remaining rounds in his gun’s magazine, trying to ensure that no one was left out from the equitable slaughter.
With that done, he could not resist a prank.
He bent over one of the bodies and pulled the radio out of its vest. “Benz, do you copy? I think I broke your mallet. Sorry.”
“It happens,” the radio replied, “but it doesn’t change anything. This is your last chance to do this the easy way. The right way. Once we reach you, well, nothing good will come of that. For you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Cheater answered calmly, and set to looting the bodies.
He was not petty enough to steal spores and yellow peas. The only interest he had now was weapons. Especially the large caliber rig which had so recently tormented his party. It was a monstrous, locally made contraption, based on an anti-tank rifle from World War II. It looked like the previous owners had installed an improved barrel and modernizations. The rounds were obviously no standard fare out of factory-sealed cans. Serious shooters always preferred wildcats.. Even Cheater had some, bought from a famous hand loader in Rainbow. They were worth the money, especially for a sniper. The quality of factory-made ammo was often subpar, even from renown manufacturers.
The rifle Cheater now had was loud and mighty. But it was muffled. Everything else, such as reduced powder rounds and various tricks to reduce the bullet’s initial velocity, would further dampen the report. The gun only had three modifications, and they were weak. But silence was the most critical aspect now.
That was precisely the reason why he had left his gun with Beetle. A single shot from that cannon would stir up thousands of beasts for miles. Benz’s gang was already enough of a challenge.
Wait, what’s this? He picked up a strange looking tablet computer. It was heavy and rimmed in a massive metal protective frame with rubber pad bumpers. The sentinel had earlier been holding one like it too. Cheater had not thought of rummaging through the man’s backpack; it had likely been there.
The device had taken a bullet right into the center of its screen and was unlikely to ever power on again. He doubted they had brought it along to play games on. Probably it had received the data from the various sensors around the building. Now, this information was sadly inaccessible. But Cheater’s Flash of Omniscience was its own surveillance system. He just had to head down to get a view on his adversaries.
So he returned to the stairs.
The lower he could get before the encounter, the better: more floors above meant more room for tactical withdrawal.
He didn’t have to look for Benz’s people for long. Six floors below, he saw the first. He realized then why they were ascending so slowly.
No, their generosity towards Cheater was not the primary aim. Each time they stopped on a floor, they spread out across the entire area, making stops here and there. As if they were installing more sensors, or doing something similar.
Were they trying to ensure that he could not escape? He doubted that. This was a lot of floors to cover. Closing all of the ways down would take hundreds and hundreds of sensors, and how would such a system even function? Building out a system of carefully placed sensors was one thing—but these were dozens and dozens that seemed at random.
Say one fires. Than another. What’s the next course of action? First, you have to figure out where they are. Serious alarm systems required as much setup time after installation as they did before.
Was there something Cheater didn’t know about these alarms? Or was the enemy’s activity something else? He was not overly upset. After all, they were not reacting to him now. He could continue observing them from the floor above.
Less than five minutes had passed before the temptation to shift from observation to action became irresistible. His enemies were too predictable. First they scattered into all the nooks and crannies, taking their incomprehensible actions, and then they returned to the stairs and climbed them to the next floor. At that moment, they could be caught by a bullet or arrow from above.
Tossing a grenade was the best option, but an unavailable one.
A boom was the last thing he wanted.
He gave in. Cheater counted twelve downstairs. It would be great to cut that down to eleven.
His pistol was a good option, but he ultimately chose the bow. Doubts that he would be able to shoot more than once caused him to put everything into one single attempt.
The bow did feel more familiar than the pistol, too. It had an excellent set of modifications, including increased arrow velocity. A bullet still went much faster, but with his special rig, that difference would be much smaller now. The atypical weapon might also confuse the enemy so that he did not realize what had happen
ed.
And a confused enemy was the best kind of enemy there was.
His looted rifle would be a better choice in terms of combat parameters, but Cheater did not want them to know yet that he had collected it. They could find out about it later.
He took up a position in the stairwell, and gray figures flashed through his Darkvision.
He shot.
The result exceeded all expectations. Not the fact that he hit. Yes, his Accuracy and the powerful bow removed one opponent from the game.
But what he learned was how all of his enemies responded.
All of them fired. There was no moment of confusion—the return volley was practically instant. Veterans on the Continent had amazing Reaction, as a rule, and were difficult to attack without immediate retribution.
But at least half of his opponents were using machine guns and rifles which were not equipped with silencers. Ordinary guns, with ordinary ammunition.
The silence was broken.
Cheater was nearly deafened by the roar, despite his distance from it. The raging sounds echoed up the walls of the concrete stairwell walls and slammed into his ears.
They’re insane. Thousands of beasts are on their way now.
Cheater hurried up the stairs, thoughts of a surrounding horde besieging his head. The faster he got out of here, the lower his risk of getting struck by a ricochet round.
An oddity caught his peripheral vision. A golden light. Was that a shard from a tracer round?
He turned, and his jaw dropped. It was a firefly, a tiny will-o’-the-wisp, a fairy out of Ocarina of Time, but with a golden color. Its yellow shimmer could not be a tracer. The light of a mighty lantern, focused in a tightly crumpled ball of foil.
Without any apparent power source. It was not corporeal, and had nothing to do with the bullets coming up from below.
Another one showed up. And other, and other, until there were dozens. A whirlwind of sparkling golden snowflakes, swirling onto his landing.
One touched Cheater and stuck to his sleeve. The others rushed him then, clinging to him from all sides.
He increased his speed and burst through the center of the mysterious blizzard as the shooting intensified. The enemies started aiming higher, striking the concrete in places that were dangerously close.
Somehow, they had eyes on him, and it wasn’t hard to guess why.
The damned sparks made Chameleon worthless. As long as they hung on Cheater, he shone like the midday sun.
With a glance down, he saw that despite the end of his last Flash of Omniscience, he could see what was occurring several floors below. Not everything could be seen, of course, but the whirl of snowflakes was visible. They could be easily seen through all of the steel and concrete. Every material became a window to their location. And they were multiplying rapidly. He saw several nexuses, from which they sprayed in all directions. Those things were giving birth to them.
But what the hell were they? Fiercely all of the barrels fired, illuminating the skyscraper, slicing through reinforced concrete. The bombastic nature of the concert in the midst of the city of the dead did not bother his opponents.
Were they here to kill Cheater and then die at the hands of the infecteds? To win at any cost?
Why?
No, this was no kamikaze mission. There was something more cunning afoot. The Continent was a mysterious place. Nothing and no one could be trusted. That included your own ears and eyes.
What had he gotten into this time? How could he oppose this enemy’s tactics?
Cheater basically understood the plan of his pursuers. These fairies were from a rare sensor ability where the locators emanated moved to a specified target. Their source, however, was not a human. The luminous entities from which the sparkles flew were not players. Players were, however, certainly involved. This must have been what his opponents had been installing on each and every floor.
They weren’t exactly sensors. How do I get out of this?
The fireflies could not be dislodged from his clothes or his skin, but they became dimmer the farther Cheater moved away from his opponents. All he could do was climb higher and higher, yielding floor after floor to his foes as he sought a method to counter their sophisticated search.
That foe easily watched the spark-covered silhouette rising upward and was in no hurry to follow. In a fast chase, all kinds of mishaps could occur, and if Cheater’s illumination were to entirely fade out, he might get them again as they rushed. So they moved at the speed they had prior, floor by floor, processing each as they went. Entering any of the covered floors would cause him to shine like the day.
Cheater would climb higher and higher until he was trapped on the roof, and they would then activate the tracers fully. Sparks would light the sky, the skyscraper, and the sneaky player. As Cheater was unable to fly, he would have to use his remaining trump cards. Of which he had few.
What was the easiest way to counter such an ability? Destroy the source.
That led to a problem. Cheater had no idea who was deploying these sticky illuminators. He had his suspicions, though. While ten of them scampered about the floors, placing firefly emitters, two of them stood in place.
These were quite possibly the search specialist and the group’s commander himself. One was always at the ready to make Cheater visible as soon as he revealed his position. The other protected the first, as the most valuable asset of the team, and coordinated the actions of all the rest.
Killing the sensor would enable him to do with this group as he had with the previous one. He would use Chameleon and his powerful stats to take them out one by one. Without their cunning sensor, they would have a hard time of it.
How, though, could he identify which of the two was the sensor?
No. He would have to take them both out.
If he could even get to them. As long as these indelible sequins decorated his clothes, he could not take the stairs or utility shafts. Those were the places with the highest concentrations of the treacherous trackers.
What an ability! It showed enemies through multiple levels of reinforced concrete. It must have cost a bundle of mana. Meaning it was expensive to sustain. The sensor had only activated it when Cheater was nearby and had given away his position. Before that instant, no fireflies had been visible.
He had to wait for these to blink out, descend towards his enemies again, and somehow finish both of the pair off before the bedazzling blizzard could begin again.
It was his only option, and it seemed doable. His first thought was to use Flash of Omniscience, sneak to the floor above the two, and pile mana in Explosive Round.
He could kill the pair by shooting through the floor, as Explosive Round had massive penetration power and only detonated when hitting the target.
If he had his rifle, he would have done just that. He had confidence in his weapon. But not in this looted gun. The enemies did not have long to go until they reached the top, where with the fireflies they would locate him easily. No matter how tough he was, he could not fend off a dozen bad guys with the ability to see him through walls.
He would only get one try at this.
It could not fail.
As he continued rushing upstairs, he sketched out a new plan in his head. The flight of stairs ended in front of the elevators where his battle with the last trio from the first group had taken place. Their bodies had crumbled into black dust, but their ammo and weapons remained. Even one of their bound weapons.
He could collect and use it, for now.
It was a disposable grenade launcher. A popular weapon, but this one had an anti-personnel projectile, rather than the anti-tank missiles so popular throughout the Continent. It was rare to see this variant.
Thankfully, he was not fighting a tank.
This was only a fallback for him, though. A light machinegun was his primary plan. Loading up the first few rounds with Explosive Round would make them punch through any type of body armor. Priests and healers were rare, so
he doubted their group had such. A pair of well-aimed bursts would kill the enemy’s primary tool.
He found climbing rope in one of the enemy’s backpacks as well. It was too short to reach the ground, but Cheater did not need it to go that far.
All he needed was enough for one floor.
His looting session was finished. Now, on to his next encounter with Benz and friends.
* * *
Flash of Omniscience was a great ability. He could see who was where and what they were doing, in nearly any circumstance. Including the two who sat out of the device planting.
There was no great obstacle to reaching them, since he knew where they were. He needed to select the correct window opening, take them both out with his machine gun, and then hide.