CHAPTER 35

STOVALL TO TEAM WATSON: Lozano is secured. Bad news, though… We lost Trainee Stone. She ran at a goddamn vehicle called a Humvee holding a grenade. You should have seen it.

WATSON TO TEAM STONE: Copy, did Slampa send you guys the plan to meet up east of the base?

STOVALL: Yes, we know the general direction of the base, so once we find it we will use the HUD compass to stumble around until we find it.

WATSON: Roger, we are trying to gather some equipment, so just let us know when you guys are in the general area. We will let you know when we head that way.

That really sucked to lose one of our team leaders, but it could have been much worse. The fact that the other teams faced some sort of vehicle mounted resistance and only lost one person is incredible, especially considering they only had that one RPG as a heavy weapon. I had a lot of questions, but that had to wait until later as Miller and I had more pressing matters.

The trip to the cache was uneventful, and as Slampa suspected, the loot found at this one was even better than what Stone and Prescotts team’s walked away with. We found two more of those RPG launchers, three BASIC MEDICAL KITS, 500 rounds of AK-47 ammunition, one more KEVLAR vest, one more AK-47, and a new weapon that I immediately fancied;

SVD DRAGUNOV SNIPER RIFLE

Heavy Ranged Weapon - Special

REQUIRES THE FOLLOWING TO USE: Dexterity 7

DAMAGE: 25 Damage on hit

AMMUNITION: 10/10

SPECIAL:

Armor piercing - this weapon ignores all light and medium armor

4X Crit strikes - This weapon causes 4x the damage on critical strikes

Aiming - Aiming with this weapon enables critical strikes

Scope (Upgrade) - This weapon, when aimed, can zoom up to 4 times.

Immoveable - You must remain stationary to use this weapon

UPGRADES: 0 Available

This is not equipped like a normal weapon, you must assign it to one of your special weapon slots. This weapon can be reloaded like a normal basic weapon, but requires special ammunition. Great for a sneaky bastard to use…

Hot damn! This was perfect for me, and I had the 7 dexterity required to use it. Not only that, this would give me the ability to scout out the base from safety. I wondered how this interacted with the ability to inspect others…

Miller came over to me, as I was ogling my new find. “Whoa, thats a nice weapon!” She remarked as she inspected it. “I don’t have the dexterity to use it, but if you do I think it’ll go great with how your abilities are unlocking. No need to move quick with sneak when you can blast ‘em from afar, right?”

I nodded in agreement, “ What are you gonna take from this stash?”

“The Kevlar vest for sure, it definitely works with my tanky abilities. And I’m only one strength from using one of these RPG’s, so I’ll probably hang onto one. How do you train strength here, anyway?”

I shrugged, “I imagine how you would in real life - move some heavy shit around, or do push ups?”

She immediately dropped to the ground, and started knocking out push ups. “Welp, I guess I’ll test this theory out.”

I scoffed at this. We didn’t have time for her to do some damned PT in the middle of a damn warzone… but I had to admit she had a point. My dexterity had increased, and I imagine it was from all the walking, running, and sneaking around I’d been doing; so it only made sense to train strength, you did strength things. Like the real world, you probably needed to do more for each level to progress. Now that I thought of it… my Strength stat was only 5, how was she beating me at that?

As I watched her crush out push ups, it was obvious - she was much more… fit. It was obvious the system accounted for your personal strengths within context to the average, so me being a 5 made sense. I was so much better at running than push ups or pull ups. I looked like a flopping fish when I did either of them.

Miller hopped to her feet, “Whew, 50 down! Well… it didn’t move, but I guess if I keep chipping away, I’ll get to that 8 in no time!”

I grunted, “That’s if this works… but let me know.”

Miller nodded, a wide smile coming to her face. “Well, shall we get to the rest of the group?”

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I nodded, and as I turned I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder, and Miller screamed.

I must have temporarily blacked out from pain. As I opened my eyes, my vision was a bit blurry, and there was a sharp, distinct burning in my shoulder. I looked around in a daze, as the loud, ‘pop, pop’ pop’ of shots came to my ears.

Miller was maybe 10 feet away from me, tucked behind a tree where I could see her popping out and shooting from. The groggy feeling I had quickly disappeared, replaced by adrenaline and fear. I coughed, and focused on the chat for a second;

SLAMPA TO TEAM CHAT: What happened?! I see James’ HP dropped critically low.

MILLER: Under attack, I stabilized him with a med kit and got him to cover. Standby.

That explained why my back was against a tree now. I spotted my HP bar sitting at about a third full. How did a single bullet rip so much of my health in a single hit? I really needed to understand this damage system.

Blinking away the last of the blurriness, I noted I had been hit a few times; the right shoulder and looks like through my bicep. It hurt like a bitch, and as I tried to raise my right arm, I realized I couldn’t. The bleeding had stopped, likely from the medical kit, but I couldn’t use it at all.

However, my left arm still worked perfectly fine. Maybe I could at least help with cover fire here?

I quickly swapped in my M-4 rifle, and tested raising it with a single arm. I was able to raise it, but firing it would be nearly impossible as I could only hold it up maybe 5 seconds before my muscles gave out. I found myself thinking if strength had an impact on this, but waved it away quickly as I needed to help Miller out. Bullets were peppering all around her, as she tucked behind her tree. She spotted that I was awake.

MILLER TO WATSON: Thank goodness! I thought you’d be out for longer. Looks like we have 4 guys bearing down on us; they look like the Recon guys, but somethings different.

WATSON: Alright… I’ll see if I can help. The M-4 is a no-go, so I’ll try the new weapon.

I focused on my special weapon slot, and suddenly the Sniper Rifle replaced my M-4. Damn, that was a bit weird. The rifle, while much longer and heavier than the M-4, had a sort of kick stand on the end. I assumed this was for stability of the weapon.

WATSON: Can you cover me for about 30 seconds, I need to get this thing set up.

Miller looked at me. As I used my feet to push the kick stand out, I nodded her way, signalling I was ready to go. She popped out from behind her tree and unloaded down range, a steady ‘thump, thump, thump.’

I took advantage, tossing myself bodily to my left, hitting the ground. I pulled the rifle up, barely managing to get it into position, as I saw Millers message.

MILLER: RELOADING! Be careful!

I barely got my face behind the scope when bullets began impacting the tree next to me, and around me. I instinctively pulled the trigger, not even aiming really, the loud “BOOM!” echoing from my rifle.

The trajectory was way off, but the power was undeniable as it tore a massive chunk out of a tree maybe 40 feet away. The shooting paused temporarily, our enemies ducking out of sight was my guess. It must have been long enough, as I heard Miller resume her fire from my right.

I took a deep breath, this time looking through the scope and down through the trees. I immediately spotted one of our enemies, and used the scope function to zoom in until he took up most of the space; wow this was handy!

I tried to inspect the enemy, but received an ‘enemy too far’ error. I frowned. Maybe once my reconnaissance level is higher I could do it. Well, thats a later problem. However what Miller said was true; these guys didn’t wear masks and all black like the recon teams; they wore some type of blue fatigues, with a boxy pattern. The guy looked like the typical ‘fit, handsome’ type of solider you’d see in the movies.

What made this eerie, however, is as I spotted a second one poking out to shoot toward Miller he looked… exactly the same. Like a clone of the first.

I quickly aimed at the first target, as center as I could, and pulled the trigger again. My shot flew a bit to the right, probably because I only had one hand on the gun, but it tore through part of the tree trunk and straight into the torso of my target. He dropped to the ground immediately, dead I presumed.

YOU HAVE RECIEVED 100 XP!

As I moved to take in the second target, Miller finally landed some hits, and the guy hit the ground. Fantastic!

YOU HAVE RECIEVED 50 XP! Congratulations, you are now Level 3!

Shots continued to impact around Miller, but from where I was aiming I couldn’t make out anyone. Getting up and repositioning seemed like an idiotic move, I wasnt entirely sure I could get this rifle set back up if I moved anyway.

I decided the best I could do was try and buy Miller some time. I put away the rifle and re-equipped my M-4, standing as I did. I placed it tightly against my left hip, setting the trigger to Automatic, I started screaming and ran towards the next tree in sight, shooting in the general direction of where I believed the remaining enemies were.

As I did, the rifle waved wildly to the left and right, but I kept a first grip and held the it against my hip the best I could. The firing stopped momentarily, and I shot a message to Miller.

WATSON: I’ll keep them distracted, you take them out!

As I bumped into the next tree I ran into my next issue… reloading. I didn’t have time to pay attention to Miller anymore, as I lost sight of her. The bullets began impacting around my tree again, the ‘pop, pop, pop’ sounding much closer. I fumbled with the latch, getting the clip to drop out, barely catching it. As I clicked it back into place, I looked up as one of the clone soldiers rounded the other side of my tree.

He must have been as shocked as me, as we met each others eyes, and it seemed to hover like this for an eternity. I knew he had me dead to rights, and this must be how it felt in those final seconds of life. I know I wasn’t going to die for real, but did it hurt?

My reverie snapped as he pulled his trigger and… grazed my right cheek. It stung, taking a small chunk of my HP, but I dove to my left. How did he miss from so close, i’ll never know, but a second later.

YOU HAVE RECIEVED 50 XP!

As I hit the ground, the breath blew out of me, my chest aching from the impact. But I looked up in time to see Miller whom had, somehow, gotten behind my enemy.

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