Chapter 7

 

 

The second my butt hit the seat of my station I went about setting it up in a way that fit my natural habits. We were given 2 screens on with the map on it, another with the game loaded up with our in-game characters ported over. I went about adjusting the settings to the ones I used at home and turned the monitor so that it physically mirrored the other one. This process only took me about 5 minutes but we were given a total of 30 minutes of prep time to be sure all of our fine-tune adjustments were perfect.

Since I finished early, I went to the in-game shooting range and began getting used to the new mouse and keyboard.

When the time was called, I was prepped and ready with OverClock, Memorize, and MultiTask all activated. With memorize I was able to perfectly replicate the new map in my mind and began scanning over every location including the designated loot spawns.

The in-game timer began ticking down as every participant was entered into a holding lobby to await the start of the match.

I quickly scanned over all the avatars in-game until I located my target. It was a female avatar modeled after its owner. Without a doubt this was Naylon. Her name floated over her character so I made my way over.

Once I was next to her I began to unleash all of the taunting emotes I had gained throughout my experience in the game just to harass her.

She responded by doing the same thing.

This show display caught the attention of several other competitors who circled us and began unleashing their own emotes.

The arena audience ate it up. People were chanting my name and Naylon’s in an uproar.

30 Seconds till the Game start

Taking one last attack at her I Stood up and Roared “LETS GOOOOOOOO” and with that, the game began.

Everyone’s characters were loaded into a dropship that looked like something out of a futuristic military world. As it soared over the map people began dropping out in hopes of finding good loot.

By my landing point had already been determined. Since it was a brand-new map it was pretty oblivious that not many people had been able to memorize it since at least half of the competitors jumped with in the first few seconds.

To get to the area I wanted I would have to wait at least 30 seconds in the dropship which was navigating above the map. Then it would take me another 30 seconds of gliding in the air to get to the ground. Using OverClock I had already developed a strategy.

When I was at the exact point, I needed to be I pressed the space bar on the keyboard and my character dramatically ran and jumped out of the dropship, and began his descent. By the time I had jumped I was already alone. I hadn’t been able to notice when Naylon had abandoned ship but I did know I was alone. 

She’s going to be more worried about racking up an impressive kill count whereas I’m more worried about the weapons I acquire.

As I was running this through my mind a rocket went flying passed me and collided with the dropship causing it to explode into a giant fireball. It was a common tactic for high-level players to destroy the dropship in the hope of getting easy kills.

There’s no doubt that was her.

I expertly guided my character to the ground and began picking up every item in sight. Moving through abandoned buildings and warlike ruins I navigated through the city building my loadout. By the time I was ready to move on 60 of the 200 people in the tournament had died.

Using one of my MultiTask minds, I was monitoring every death notification.

Looks like she’s busy offing everyone she comes across.

Once my loadout was complete, I went about searching for a vehicle. It wouldn’t be long until the games Toxic Gas function kicked in and started herding all the players into a centralized area and since it was already showing in the map, I knew I was way too far outside of the safe zone.

Using my knowledge of the map I was able to locate a truck and began driving to the safe zone.

I had only been driving for about 2 minutes when the first enemy came into view. It wasn’t just once 3 people were moving as a cohesive unit towards the safe zone. While teaming up with other players wasn’t necessarily against the rules it was in poor taste. So, I did what anyone else would have and easily ran them over killing all 3, causing the entire crowd to burst out in excitement.

I turned my truck sharply sliding to a stop and jumped out. Using it as cover in case of an attack, I began looting the now corpses, grabbing up extra ammo, healing supplies and switching out my main gun with one that boasted higher stats. Since I had a quick trigger finger, I preferred the semi-automatic rifles over the full-auto ones. With my fast clicks, I was able to put more bullets downrange with a single shotgun over one that had an auto mode.

Lucky me I found my favorite gun.

Using the mouse wheel, I scrolled to my sidearm, a semi-auto handgun, and jumped back into my car. The reason why I had done that was simple. You ran faster with a handgun. If I had to bail out of my vehicle id be able to quickly move to cover.

5 minutes and 6 kills later I had made it to the center of the Safe zone and had positioned myself atop a bombed-out apartment building. When I made it to the building I had carefully laid traps down at every entrance, that way if anyone came into the apartment tower an explosion would notify me of any oncoming threats. Rigging the traps was normally tedious since a little mini-game had to be played to correctly set the claymore-mines. If you failed the mini-game the mine would explode and kill you. However, since I was in cheat mode, I had zero issues setting up the dozen or so mines.

From my vantage point, I had a perfect line of sight to the entire area, and with my previous knowledge of the Toxic Gas algorithm, I had judged this to be the exact center. So, I would be safe till the end game here if I was just able to defend it.

Alright now I just need to pick off the remaining 26 people and ill have a clean 500k.

I had made a mistake. That simple thought had raised a flag.

A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the top of the tower not far from me causing my character to be blown backward several feet and inflicting damage draining me of half my health.

I slammed one of my hands into my thigh causing pain to surge through my body.

Shit, I forgot how much stronger I am now. I thought while rubbing my sore leg.

A laugh echoed from the other side of the room.

Naylon had found me.

Clenching my teeth, I went about healing my character with a medkit. The RPG had taken out the chunk of the wall I was using as cover leaving a huge opening in my defenses.

Once my character was healed, I positioned myself near the hole in the wall and began firing off rounds towards the area the RPG had come from. Bullet holes covered the window where Naylon had been seconds ago.

She let out a swear as I watched the shadows from her character move deeper into the building across from mine. Several rounds hit the wall right next to my character's head.

Looks like we’ve drawn some spectators. 

A team of 2 had dropped to one knee in an ally way not far from my building and were taking shots at me.

With a swipe of my mouse and a couple of clicks, I dispatched them both easily.

23 left

More shots sounded from the area of the town to my left. So, I moved over to the northern side of the building and began surveying the area.

2 teams were fighting each other.

Damn, is everyone teamed up with other players except Naylon and me?

I calmly watched the battle as a team of 3 faced off against a team of 4. Explosions rang out as they began throwing grenades at each other in an attempt to kill off the whole team at once and by the end of it the team of 3 succeeded in defeating the team of 4

19

An explosion below me alerted me to someone breaching my building. But a notification popped up as soon as the explosion happened. Someone had fallen into my trap and died.

Make that 18

I chuckled slightly as I Swapped from my handgun to my rifle rapidly. It was something I did out of boredom. The movement resembled a nervous tick. I was rapidly flicking the mouse wheel which in response made my character flip from Rifle to handgun over and over.

More Shots rang out as several more people died. And after a few minutes, there were only 5 people left, Naylon, 3 Randoms, and Myself.

I watched as several explosions destroyed a building and claimed the life of the remaining 3 random players.

“Looks like it's just You and Me now BurByn, get your ass down here and fight me, you coward.”

The taunts echoed through the silent arena. The crowd was eerily quiet. I understood why though. This was the climax. The final two, and just like expected It was Me vs Naylon. The Two unknown cheaters using the Requiem System.

“Fine but let’s put on a show, pistols only, no armor, no helmets. Meet at the far side of the circle.” I responded with a challenge of my own.”

“Fine” she responded angrily

I watched as she moved to the designated location. Using the Binoculars, the game automatically gave you I made sure she had dropped everything and jumped from my building, the second my character's feet left the rooftop I opened a parachute and glided to the open area opposite her and dropped all my gear as promised.

“Standard duel rules. We start back to back move forward 6 steps turn and fire.”

I was banking too much on her holding up her end of the bargain but with this many people watching us live and online, there’s no way either of us would go back on our word. The Backlash from the internet would be deadly to our images.

She did as I said and lined up back to back with my character.

Oddly enough I wasn’t nervous. Even though there’s 500 thousand dollars on the line it wasn’t stressful. It was the first time I’d had fun playing this game in a very long time.

We both counted out loud in unison so the audience could hear us as we moved six steps forward.

“6”

“5”

“4”

“3”

“2”

“1”

I slid my mouse and hit the W, A, Shift and Space keys on my keyboard making my character diver forward and drew my weapon with the mouse’s scroll wheel, and began firing at a subhuman rate.

Her response was similar and just as quick.

Tracking her with my mouse I continued shooting until I needed to reload. Hitting the S, Shift, and space bar my character dove backward as I hit R to reload.

Naylon had beaten me to the reload and began firing before me.

Just like in other shooting games bullets had a whitish trail that followed the bullet called a tracking line. If you could predict where that line was going it was possible to barely get out of the way of the oncoming bullets. Which was exactly what I was doing.

My character was responding to every one of my inputs on the keyboard. Jumping, ducking, diving and dodging every oncoming bullet. As was Naylon. Both of us were putting on quite a show for the onlookers. I even heard someone say “holy shit” at our reaction speed.

Naylon didn’t use typical firing patterns like shooting in 2 round bursts or 3, instead, she was constantly changing up how many times she fired.

Her unpredictability would have been incredibly difficult to counter if it wasn’t for the help of OverClock but for me, it was just a matter of pinning her down. Which is what I was working on.

I was coaxing her into moving certain ways, with my shots. Thankfully she wasn’t catching on as I guided her towards, her demise.

This dance went on for several minutes until finally, the first bullet hit its mark. It wasn’t a kill shot but I was able to shoot her in her left leg. As a result, her movement speed decreased greatly causing her to hit the ground and roll behind cover.

An evil grin spread across my face as she swore loudly.

That was my signal

My hands flew across my keyboard as my character sprinted towards the piece of rubble she was ducked behind. Without stopping I made my character vault over the piece of debris, while in the air he spun toward her and unleashed a barrage of bullets.

The Crowd went ape shit. As the words VICTORY appeared on my screen.

I had one the first match and the first half of the 1-million-dollar prize belonged to me.

Letting out a sigh of relieve I stood up and punched the air causing the Crowd to cheer even louder.

“THAT’S GAME ONE FOLKS, Congratulations to BurBynYke for a very impressive victory.”

Ceez’s boomed out over the loudspeakers.

I moved over to my opponent and stood before her.

“Damn I should have figured you’d push right there. You got me this time” she said putting on a weak smile while extending her hand to me.

“You were impressive as hell Naylon, great match,” I replied grasping her hand

“Nay.” She responded to me giving me a wink “Just call me Nay”

I smiled in response to her friendly gesture.

“Alright then just call me Ayke”

I raised her hand and looked towards the crowd, which began chanting her name, causing her to smile brightly.

“Looks like you’ve got a lot of fans” I chuckled

“You too”

I let go of her hand and walked over to my brother and his Fiancé

“HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME. HAVE YOU ALWAYS BEEN THAT GOOD” he laughed while elbowing me in the ribs?

“RENTON!!” Lily protested.

“You’d know how good I was if you ever actually watched my streams asshole.” We shared a laugh as we waited for the next round to begin.

Something told me that Nay was going to headhunt me in the next match but I didn’t let it spoil the moment.

I had completed half of my task, there was still one more match to go if I wanted the rest of that million dollars.

But for now, I just basked in the fact that my community was losing it online right now at my victory.

Unknown to me there were thousands of people spreading clips of my match with Nay all over the internet.

After an hour of greeting members of my stream community and grabbing a snack, it was time to start the second match so I moved back to my station and readied myself for the next challenge.

Alright. Let’s take home another W.

 

To Be Continued