Chapter 23

I was half tempted to send a party invite to TJ, but if he hadn’t learned what a party was yet it might be a bit jarring. Yelling at him over all the noise from this distance was out of the question, not to mention we were dressed differently. Plus, with party limits set to five, we couldn’t add his friend so I figured it best to wait.

Nodding to Lozano, we moved deeper into the forest, and started moving further to the west. The clearing where the two sides were fighting was much bigger than i initially expected, almost the size of what I think a football field would be. About 30 feet from the outcropping TJ and his partner were fighting from, the corpse of the recon soldier laid. I couldn’t quite see how he died, but by the amount of blood in the area I could only assume a headshot. Damn, they were either very lucky, or a great shot.

On the other end of the clearing, the trees resumed, becoming substantially thicker than what we had seen to this point. Occasionally a flash and ‘pop’ rang out, as the three enemies took shots down the field at the hill. I found myself thinking this was pretty stupid; why didn’t the recon team start moving around the hill, it was obvious that TJ was pinned down behind that hill? Or why didn’t TJ retreat back towards the woods, from what I could see his retreat would be well covered?

Shaking my head, I continued my approach, finally spotting one of our enemies. He wore the same get up as the Recon Sergeant from earlier, and as we got close I was able to examine him;

RECON SOLDIER - NPC

JOB: RECON SPECIALIST

LEVEL: 1

THE LESS EXPERIENCED VERSION OF THE RECON SERGEANT, THE RECON SOLDIER IS LEARNING WHAT IT TAKES TO SUCCEED IN THE UNITED STATES MILITARY - HE'S MARRIED HIS FIRST STRIPPER AND HAS HIS EYES ON THAT 25% APR FORD MUSTANG BACK IN HIS HOME TOWN. TOO BAD HE'S PROBABLY NOT MAKING IT BACK THERE… FORESHADOWING?

I sort of felt bad at that introduction. If this wasn’t an NPC, I might have second guessed what we were about to do. But this was a randomly generated enemy, and they were here for us to gain experience, skills, and most importantly, equipment. If we took out this team we would all have ranged weapons which would be a tremendous boon, and we could focus on gathering with the rest of the red team.

TRAINEE WATSON TO PARTY CHAT: Lozano, lets get around the back side of this guy; we need to figure out where the other two are.

TRAINEE LOZANO: I think I have a clear shot at this guy.

TRAINEE WATSON: No, don’t, we don’t know where the other two are!

TRAINEE MILLER: We can see one, but not the other. We inspected ours, he's a specialist, so either the Sergeant is still alive, or another specialist. We can’t get close enough to inspect the dead one.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

TRAINEE WATSON: Copy, we will try and get eyes on the last one.

As I focused away from the chat, I saw Lozano beelining for our target, he had gotten slightly behind him, and was approaching in a way there was no way the specialist could defend himself. Lozano thrust his knife toward the specialists neck, and just as his knife connected with where his Carotid artery would be, there was a much louder ‘pop, pop, pop’.

Lozanos knife connected true, but as he did his chest exploded, multiple bullet holes appearing. As I watched, his health instantly plummeted, hitting rock bottom and his name going dark on my HUD.

TRAINEE SLAMPA TO PARTY CHAT: What the hell just happened?

TRAINEE WATSON: Lozanos down! He went for it, even though we told him to wait.

At that, I could hear several shots from across the clearing in what I could only assume was Miller and Slampa engaging the enemy they could see.

As I watched, Lozanos corpse disappeared in the blink of an eye. There was no fanfare, he didn’t dissolve, nothing like that. One second he was there, the next he was just gone. However, the recon specialist holding his neck as blood spirted from between his fingers, and a gurgling noise could be heard as he collapsed to the ground. I really wished I could see the enemies health at this point, it was hard to tell if he was dead or barely alive as he laid there, a pool growing underneath him.

I didn’t have much time to think. I hoped the new firefight that broke out distracted the last enemy, so I slowly crept up to the corpse of the dead soldier. My goal was to grab his M-4 and help out Miller and Slampa; at this point creeping around wouldn’t do much, and none of us had armor so I could only assume getting hit would almost guarantee death.

As I got close to the specialist, I could tell he was very obviously dead. That was curious; so was experience only awarded to the person who made a kill? Or would it be split between participants in a fight? Would Lozano still get experience, even though he died before his target?

I had not gotten any notifications of experience awarded or anything. This would definitely be something we needed to sort out later. I reached down, picking up the M-4 rifle that the specialist had dropped;

M-4 Recon Rifle

2 Handed Ranged Basic Weapon

No enchantments or upgrades, two slots available

Damage per second: 7

This weapon has two modes, AUTOMATIC and SEMI-AUTOMATIC. The SEMI-AUTOMATIC mode enables CRITICAL HITS when aiming.

Curiously the damage output of this weapon was lower than the AK-47. Maybe it had to do with the caliber of the rounds, or the type of weapon it was? Even though nothing here had a defined ‘weight’, as I picked it up there was a definite difference in the heft of this compared to the AK. I went ahead and quickly equipped it.

I took a peek at my ammo counter, it read 10/200. I went ahead and did a reload action, fumbling around until I found the latch that let the clip out. This time I didn’t drop it, thank god, just racking it back in and saying “reload” out loud so the system knew what I was doing.

It must have counted as the counter shot up to 20/190. Ok, so the clips for this weapon were only 20 rounds, and when we looted weapons we got what was left with the weapon. Great information here. Suddenly Tays voice echoed;

TAYS TIDBITS

Congratulations! You have unlocked the skill Graverobber - Level 1. It has been added to your skills under your status menu.

What the hell, why did I just unlock a skill? I didn’t have time to go and check it, let alone equip it. I hefted the weapon, took a deep breath, and prepared to support my team.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.