I'll Put Up a Tombstone for You
I let my gaze drift from the chat window parked in the corner of my vision, and there he was—a user who'd gone past begging and into outright groveling.
Honestly, a lot of things about him didn't add up. Even granting that I'd been focused elsewhere, the way he'd closed in without a whisper of presence was one of them. And his gear was far too good for someone supposedly just climbing into Silver.
Being low-ranked didn't mean you weren't allowed nice equipment, but most of the users I'd seen so far ran the so-called value weapons—the ones that punched above their price. Cosmetics, too, tended to stop at the basics.
The user in front of me, on the other hand, started with a gold-coated G36 and had an M82A1 Barrett—an anti-materiel sniper rifle I couldn't even dream of affording—slung over his shoulder.
Then again, every game had people who toyed with newbies and got off on watching them die helpless. Last of Quantum was worse for it than most.
But I couldn't go around suspecting people on guesswork alone. Idle talk here would only breed the wrong kind of misunderstanding—the same way Jump's comments had gotten me branded as a cheater.
I didn't want to turn a desperate player into a newbie-slaughter. That said, I had no intention of throwing the match either.
"I'm not throwing. I won't kill you for now, so go play."
I'd even said it kindly, all things considered. The user in front of me still showed no sign of moving. If anything, he'd gone down on his knees.
"I know I can't beat you."
So what.
I frowned and looked at him like something stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
"Right. And?"
"Please. Just throw it this once. I'm begging you. This is my first time going for Silver. If I lose here, I have to grind the points all over again..."
BANG!
The instant those words hit, my finger pulled the pistol's trigger on its own.
"...Gah!"
He flung himself sideways, startled out of his skin by the shot. The round hissed past him by a hair and punched into the wall behind him. Feeling the recoil ring through my hand, I stayed right where I was and stared him down, ice-cold.
Even the way he moved to dodge was ugly to look at.
"If you're not going to play, just leave. I'm not throwing."
An enemy with no will to fight wasn't worth killing.
I turned to go look for someone else. That was when a spike of killing intent crawled up my spine, and I threw myself sideways. A gunshot followed—enormous.
BOOM!!!
Far too loud to be a rifle or a pistol. I glanced back over my shoulder.
The same user had the anti-materiel rifle shouldered and aimed straight at me. If I hadn't dodged, it would have been instant death.
More than that—an anti-materiel sniper was a nightmare to control, thanks to the recoil. Hitting me cleanly at this range was one thing. Holding that rifle without so much as a wobble was another.
Meaning he'd mastered the recoil completely.
All of it pointed to one conclusion.
"You're not going for Silver for the first time... you're just not going."
I said it in a voice gone cold, eyes locked on him.
This was not a newbie. I was sure of it now.
Everything I'd seen at this rating said the same thing: players here often couldn't even hold a shooting stance properly. How to manage recoil. Where to aim as the muzzle climbed. Setting up when they spotted an enemy, then following through into the shot—most of them were sloppy from start to finish.
This user, ambush or not, had just put on a perfect shot. With a high-recoil Barrett, no less.
Piece of trash.
A rifle with kick like that was brutally hard to run. In the worst cases you didn't just lose the gun—you got hurt. It was not a weapon some clueless newbie could use.
And he'd put a perfect shot downrange without so much as a grimace. If he hadn't controlled the recoil, that round never would have flown true.
Silver? My guess was he could stroll into that tier whenever he felt like it. If he could run a finicky anti-materiel rifle, what gun couldn't he use? And he wanted me to believe he couldn't reach Silver while casually carrying a gun that killed you in one hit.
It was almost funny.
"You dodged that."
He huffed a laugh at my words. Then he dumped the Barrett, reached back, and pulled the G36.
The reason you carried an assault rifle on top of a sniper was obvious enough: so you had an answer when someone got close, exactly like this. Most people would rather take a few extra rifle rounds than haul a second gun—but this was a game. Keeping a spare for when the enemy closed in wasn't a bad call. However brutal an anti-materiel rifle was, at a distance of a few steps you couldn't line up a calm shot anyway.
The panicked, flustered act from a moment ago vanished like it had never been there. His face went blank with almost supernatural speed.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
"You're laughing?"
"Yeah. You look ridiculous."
He scowled, clearly not a fan of being laughed at. Honestly, just looking at him was enough. That Barrett he'd been holding had more presence than the gaudy assault rifle he was waving around now. Maybe that was why he'd been carrying it in the first place—just to intimidate newbies.
The more I thought about it, the more disgusting it got. The laugh kept leaking out.
"I'll keep killing you until the game's over."
"Go ahead and try."
Even after a warning like that, his expression didn't so much as twitch. If anything, he grinned like a man who already knew he'd win.
Every last bit of it was genuinely repulsive.
A user who'd hit a wall in the high ranks, tanked his rating on purpose, and parked himself down here. No confidence he could beat the real experts, so he toyed with people worse than him and fed on the superiority.
Humans were pack animals that sorted themselves into ranks; I wasn't so naive I couldn't understand the impulse. Feel superior when you're high in the order, inferior when you're low. Trying to satisfy yourself by believing you sit above someone else was animal instinct.
That still didn't give you permission to torment other people. Looking down on someone meant you'd better be ready to be looked down on yourself.
"Hey. Shoot."
I said it with a cold smile. The corner of his mouth curled up, slow.
"Dodge a few newbie bullets and you think I'm the same?"
He wasn't wrong that newbie bullets were easy to dodge. Their aim was obvious, their shooting sloppy, and not many of the rounds even came in true. The higher I climbed, the harder this kind of play would get.
But that was a problem for when I actually reached those tiers. Not something I needed to worry about with a guy who'd felt a wall and come crawling down.
"How washed do you have to be to grind all the way down to this tier just to mess around? I'm getting sad just looking at you."
It landed. His grip on the rifle tightened.
"Real composed, aren't you... Get a little famous and now you think you're untouchable?"
"Full of myself, huh... I wish I were. Then those little tricks of yours might actually be entertaining. Don't you think?"
The continued needling was doing its job. His face twisted into something ugly; even from here, he looked properly furious. At the same time he shouldered the rifle and pulled the trigger without a second's delay.
The rounds came in a tight, stable grouping. His claim of having climbed the high ranks wasn't empty talk. The grouping was clean, and the recoil control was close to perfect. On shooting alone, he was the best user I'd seen—though you did have to factor in that this was still Bronze.
With Perimeter Watch active, my vision washed red. It sketched a rough warning of where the incoming rounds would be.
I kept noticing it: Lee Harin's body was a strange piece of work. The senses were so sharp it almost felt like the body was telling me how to move. Focus hard enough and I could probably read the space around me with my eyes closed. The dynamic vision was just as unfair—good enough to track a mosquito in flight.
I still didn't understand how someone with talent like that could have a body this frail. Junk on the outside, supercomputer on the inside. She hadn't just mixed that talent in. She'd left it to rot.
Anyway, even shots he'd committed to weren't that hard for me to slip.
"You crazy bitch..."
While he scrambled to swap magazines, I drove the knife into the nape of his neck without a second's hesitation.
I watched him go slack and hit the floor, then walked on, indifferent. There was still plenty of match left.