Il-Su sucked in a breath, and let it out slowly. He wasn’t surprised. He didn’t know why he should be. He’d led himself down this path, and while he’d talked a big game about being willing to kill other people to Mayumi, he wasn’t sure he could actually kill a real person.
A boy’s surprised face flickered in his memory, a knife buried in his chest.
No. No time for that now. He couldn’t… couldn’t think about that. Later. That was a memory for later.
He had to focus on now. Twenty-four enemies. Assuming he could break their Tenacity with one dagger each – which was insanely unlikely – he still didn’t have enough projectiles to deal with everyone. He had a good supply of blades, but not nearly that many.
What was worse, he had no way of breaking line of sight, nothing to hide behind and take cover. It was all open ground, covered in sand. How was he supposed to…
Something finally went right.
The ground rumbled, upsetting Il-Su’s balance, and sending others sprawling to the ground. He shifted, keeping to his feet. Falling on his ass now would be a death sentence. Luckily, this was the kind of thing he excelled at. He might not be a sturdy tank, but he could move with enough speed and grace to make an elf blush.
Sand burst upwards into the sky as rocks began to jut out of the ground, bursting upwards, and while everyone was ducking away and shielding their eyes and flinching, Il-Su was moving.
He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he had a pretty good idea. Holt was probably setting up a more dynamic arena. Something to entertain. A grand melee on an open field was boring. It worked fine for one-on-one confrontations, but for a group fight like this, it wouldn’t let every individual fighter shine, wouldn’t give everyone present a chance. The tanks and nukers would reign supreme. Everyone else would be reaped like wheat at harvest.
This let anyone who was the least bit tactical the chance to break off from the group, start coming up with plans. Maybe make alliances. The chance for Il-Su to do the latter was pretty much non-existent. But the former? He could work the former.
More rocky pillars rose from the ground, and Il-Su darted around them, hopping onto one as it jutted out, and used it as a stepping stone to jump onto another. Each pillar was anywhere from a few inches wide and a few feet tall, to the size of large cars. One, somewhere close to the centre of it all, was as big as a house.
For now, he’d avoid that one. It was too big, there’d be too many eyes on it. People would be trying to use it as high ground, maybe get a lay of the land from on top of it. It’d be a beacon for the smarter players, and anywhere near them was the last place he wanted to be.
The earth shuddered more as dozens of pillars split its surface, and then dozens more. Il-Su kept moving, hopping from one to the next, his foot barely alighting on top of one as it moved before leaping for the succeeding one in the line.
He didn’t continue in any one particular direction, instead opting to keep it random, skipping about until he was certain he’d lost anyone chasing him, before landing on the ground and ducking behind a pillar large enough to cover his body.
His Tenacity would take time to recover. He had no illusions that he was quick and graceful and skilled enough to kill twenty-four players without taking a hit. He wasn’t even sure he’d be able to take three without taking damage.
Apparently his Will had recovered while he’d been dead. He’d have free access to his skills, even if every single one of them was expensive to cast, or had some kind of disadvantage to go with their boon.
But that also meant that everyone else was probably working with a full Will bar, too. Some of these people had been dead for days. He hadn’t been at Holt’s little tutorial, but people he still had connections with had filled him in.
A lot of the people here would be the chaff. Not people who’d died properly, in combat, but rather to sickness. Because they hadn’t invested properly into their Tenacity or Strength. They’d left themselves vulnerable to pathogens from a foreign biosphere.
And many of the people here weren’t gamers, much less VR gamers. Even if they’d manage to secure Pacts, or decent gear and weaponry, they wouldn’t know how to use them. They were all n00bs.
Il-Su could work with that.
The more he thought about it, the better his chances seemed.
He didn’t need to fight them. He just needed to break them. Get them to turn on one another. Despair.
Il-Su smirked to himself, drew a dagger, and rounded the pillar he was using for cover, and immediately fell backwards, dodging away from a club that nearly bashed his face in. The weapon was an ugly thing, meant to be wielded two-handed, made from one piece of wood and carved expertly with a serrated edge on one end, and a flat side for smacking things on the other. It reminded him of old Samoan weapons from the real world, but instead of the usual tribal patterns etched into its surface, someone had burned what looked like cats at play all along its length.
Il-Su rolled backwards, springing to his feet, and caught sight of his attacker, a woman with some interesting choices in fashion. She’d gone with unicorn hair, a riot of bright colours, save the top of her head, which was a midnight black. Her skin was pale in a way that reminded him of Kirhaela, but her eyes were solid black, with no sclera showing at all, a choice that must’ve been made in character creation.
He had no idea who she was. He’d never really been concerned with other streamers, didn’t watch anyone else’s content except to learn the current meta in whatever game he was playing, trying to decipher how to beat others.
Well, she was probably trash. He could deal with this easily enough, and move on. He flicked a knife out at her, already drawing a second to do damage when her Tenacity dropped, but she somehow spun that club in a short arc and deflected his blade.
Well. That was a problem.
She took a step towards him, and he got ready to start throwing. Against Sami, he’d been at so many disadvantages. She’d practiced against him enough to know how to deal with his tactics without even thinking about it. He’d had nowhere to hide, and their battlefield had been a large, open space. Even the ground had been sand. No hard surfaces to play with there.
But here? With all these stone pillars?
He moved to throw another knife, and his attacker shifted her stance to defend. He didn’t hurl his weapon at her, but instead at a pillar.
Ricochet shots were tricky, especially when working with uneven surfaces. A normal person would never be able to manage it. Il-Su wasn’t a normal person.
The knife bounced off the surface, spinning in a wide overhead arc, and coming downwards in a lazy fall. While that blade did that, Il-Su threw another knife, and then another. His attacker managed to deflect both those blades, but lost sight of the first, and it came down and smashed into her head.
There was a brief flicker of energy as her Tenacity was hit, but no sign that it’d broken.
Il-Su made a frustrated hiss of annoyance. So much for this woman being trash. Well, there was nothing for it.
He made a quick motion as if he was about to dart in and attack her, and as she planted her feet on the ground, ready to defend, he turned and ran.
He couldn’t see her face, but he knew how it must’ve looked. Confused, followed by shocked, then outraged that he’d cowardly fled the field of battle. Wasn’t he supposed to be the legendary ‘Bringer of the Long Quiet?’ Why was he running? Wasn’t he honourable? Didn’t he want to defend his reputation?
It’d happened so many times in the past. How many times had he fought against relative newbies who always responded the same way? It didn’t matter how you fought. It only mattered who was still standing at the end.
As he ran, he heard footsteps churning up sand behind him. He twisted and turned, ducking between pillars and breaking line of sight where he could. The field of battle was now a veritable maze, and he used it to his advantage.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted someone, and not the woman chasing him. Someone else was in their area. But they were turned away from him, their back presented in an appealing manner.
Il-Su had to fight every urge in his body to charge directly at the person, to attack at the vulnerability and remove a potential enemy. But he had no idea how strong the person’s Tenacity was, and if such a blitz attack would work, or only draw out the fight. And if the fight drew out, then that’d mean the gothic unicorn chick with the scary fucking club would catch up to him.
“Over here!” someone shouted. “We got him!”
Il-Su ducked behind another pillar and stopped, drawing two knives. Had someone seen him? He looked upwards, towards Holt’s floating island. That asshole was probably broadcasting the action to everyone in the arena, in case they couldn’t see what was going on from their seats. Il-Su just needed to see what they were showing, see if it was footage of someone chasing him.
But the screens were pointed towards the audience, and he was directly beneath them. He didn’t have the angle. Well, he’d just have to use his own senses.
He focused, stilling his breath, and tried to tune out the drumming of blood in his ears. More voices called out in the distance, but they seemed to be getting further from him. There were whoops and cheers of joy, followed by a scream. A young sounding one, from a voice that cracked.
So, the competitors had already broken up into roving gangs. They were probably looking for weak targets, people to bring down quickly, like wolves on deer. Only one person would be able to kill him, if they could manage it. No one would get to share credit. Killing other contestants was inevitable.
Well, good. Better if they thinned out the herd. Left less people to chase him.
That voice cried out again. It was definitely young. Scared. Terrified.
Il-Su thought of that boy again, that night Kirhaela had come for him. How he’d thrown a knife at her, and somehow, for the first time in years, his aim was off. Had the handle slipped? Had his palm and fingers been sweaty? He didn’t know, not even weeks afterwards, waking up drenched in sweat to the memory of it.
A boy, wide-eyed and surprised, standing in the street and watching people fight, looking at Il-Su, and then down at his own chest, shocked to find a blade in it.
He’d yelled. Not in pain, or fear, but in astonishment. Shock. He’d called out for his mother, as if to telling her to see the neat thing that had just happened.
And then he’d fallen over, all while someone laughed hysterically.
It was real. So real.
Il-Su’s mind reeled backwards.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. This was a game.
Il-Su’s hand tightened on the handle of his knives. Somewhere, a young boy was shouting in fear. And this time, it wasn’t a game. That was an actual human. A person.
“Dammit.”
He ran towards the direction of the sound.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter