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CHANGING COURSE HALFWAY through my dive, I followed XMan323 into the Shafts. As soon as he landed, he sprinted over to a patch of shrubbery that had a concealed weapon behind it. It was a treasure chest with a high weapon hit-rate - one that usually spawned sniper rifles more often than shorter-ranged weapons, according to numbers I had started to count and collect for my own sake.
I followed him, a few paces behind the burly, white-skinned avatar. XMan323 moved towards the chest with me in tow, and I was fairly confident that I could melee him to death before he looted anything of significance. It was a quick kill of a player who seemed rather seasoned, and eliminating competition as early as possible was a good strategy to follow here.
XMan323 suddenly strafed to the right, facing ahead but moving right like he was imitating a crab. I still followed him, completely confused by his strange antics, when in the corner of the screen, I noticed it.
A revolver revolved just a few paces from the chest, right out in the open. The outline was green. I knew my luck had run out. All my prey had to do now was collect and equip the weapon before I reached him, turn, and fire away at my pickaxe-wielding avatar until I died in the game, ranked a lowly #94. How six people had already managed to die was beyond me, but that did not matter at the moment.
I had to do something. He was barely ten steps from the revolver. Looking frantically to my left and right, I saw a tree. My mind raced to find a solution, and I gambled. Hurrying to the tree, I cut it down, getting the wood necessary to build a small wall. Constructing it between me and XMan323, I fervently hoped it would take him a little while to equip and select the weapon.
As my luck would have it, the wall just got built in time. I heard a shot from the other side and cringed, but the structure held. Quickly turning around, I opened the chest.
It was a rare Tactical SMG!
“Yes!”
As my opponent rounded the corner of the wall, I was ready for him, with my reticle aimed right around where his head would pop out. And as soon as it did, I capped him with a bullet that just barely strayed off-path.
"#94 avoided," I sighed.
Only when I had finished collecting the rest of the items in the chest and the revolver that XMan323 had dropped did I allow myself to take a breath. That had been an intense skirmish, but I had to keep moving. The storm was going to start devouring the outer areas of the island soon.
Electrified by the way I had just survived, I pushed ahead, confident that I would be able to get my first-ever top-five run. And I did exactly that. When a veteran with a Legendary Heavy Shotgun finally got the better of my more ranged weapon loadout, I had scored a solid #4. Progress had finally been made!
“Not bad!”
“YAAAAH!” I shrieked and turned around, hands curled up into fists, ready for an ambush.
“Whoa! Watch it!” Gwen jumped back in alarm, tripping over an empty can of Red Bull and crashing to the floor with a thud. It was my turn to laugh, and laugh I did, roaring out into my room and the rest of the house.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her once the hilarity of the moment had passed.
“Nothing,” she rubbed her back gingerly, wincing when she touched where she’d landed. It had been a hard fall, it seemed. “I placed #56 and you weren’t in the lobby, so I decided to come over and check on you. Man, Wendy, you did amazing this time! #4, for the first time, that too! That’s gotta be a reason for a celebration.”
Something about her tone annoyed me.
“Enough with the patronizing, please. Anyway, this was a long time coming.”
“A long time?” Gwen’s face was incredulous, her slim eyebrows arched as far up as they could possibly go. “Wendy, it’s been a week. Do you know it took me twice as long just to crack the top fifty? Girl, that’s an actual achievement.”
“Okay,” I replied, eager to tell her my plans, “Anna wants to meet.”
Gwen’s elegant face frowned. It was really difficult for her to make a bad face. Gwen’s position as one of the most sought-after girls in college wasn’t just because of her addiction to games. If she just bothered to put on a little makeup, she could be a model, for crying out loud.
“Anna, you say?” she seemed a little uncomfortable with the idea.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, a little concerned.
“No, nothing like that,” she hurriedly explained. “It’s just that... Anna was the one who killed me in that last game.”
My eyes widened.
“Really? Friendly fire? After a week of playing as a fairly decent three-man squad?”
“Yeah,” Gwen sighed. “There was no explanation, no warning, nothing. She just plugged me in the back with a full-bore shotgun from point-blank range. Nothing I could do. The chat had a simple message on it. ‘I’m sorry.’ What could she mean? What the hell was that?”
I was flabbergasted. From what I’d seen of Anna, she was a rather docile player, only choosing to attack those far less skilled than her. And since the first time I’d saved her and made our makeshift ‘team’, she’d not done that even once; until now.
“If you want,” I pressed on, “we could ask her when we meet tomorrow. Perhaps there was a good enough reason for it.”
I circled the lobby a couple more times. Anna wasn’t there. Had she started a new match already? What had happened-
I didn't have to brood on her absence for too long.
There she was. No new match had started, and from the time had passed, I could only conclude one thing.
The only way Anna could have taken this long was if she had placed in the top two. Forget that, there was a weird feeling I had that Anna had come first - that she had just won this round.
“A top-twenty ranker just won!" whistled Glen. "That’s going to mess with the season placing.”
“I know,” I said wistfully. #1 was still something I was quite a distance away from, and someone we considered a sacrifice had just beaten me to it.
“Let’s just meet her tomorrow and get to the bottom of this?”
Gwen nodded.