The Training Ground

The moment I discovered I could install the single most essential facility inside my Shelter, I held off. Before committing that kind of gold, I decided to pay a visit to the Sniper Shop first — look before you leap, especially when every coin has to count.

Tucked in the corner of my status window, right beneath Sniper Shelter, a shop tab glowed in the same shade of violet. It had been locked before, flashing a message that it wasn't linked to the Shelter. Not anymore.

It works now.

I stepped through without a hitch.

"Whoa."

The first thing that hit me the instant I was inside was a single, brutal thought.

Expensive!

Every last item on the shelves was priced like a ransom.

"How the hell am I supposed to buy any of this?"

It was a hidden shop, and everything in it existed solely for me, so the exclusive pricing made a kind of sense. Still. I didn't think a hundred and sixty million gold would feel this tight. I'd walked in expecting a leisurely shopping spree. That had been a mistake.

Fine. Change of strategy. Find what I needed right now, and nothing else.

Hmm.

I browsed. As expected, there was nothing that would honestly, properly overcome having 1 HP. I'd stopped hoping for that miracle a while ago. But I wasn't out of options, because what I could find were items built for a much uglier kind of survival — the kind where you never get hit at all, and you only ever attack from a place no one can see.

The item in my head was already clear. It didn't take long to find it.

"Oh-ho."

My biggest weakness. The muzzle report.

If gunshots kept ringing out of a studio apartment, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out the sniper was me — and the sound would be kind enough to hand them my address while it was at it. With a silencer, that problem goes away.

The listing noted they were consumables. Each one had a durability of 1,000. One point of durability per shot. Simple enough. The ranks were about performance: Low-Rank cut the noise by 10%, Mid-Rank by 30%, High-Rank by 50%.

So a true silent shot was impossible? Not if I had anything to say about it. I kept browsing, and at the end of that stubborn little hunt I found exactly what I was looking for.

I knew it.

A silencer with a name that unhinged. The really good items always had names that sounded like a joke. Even the look of it was pitch-black and somehow… gentlemanly.

The price, though.

"A hundred million gold."

Steep for a consumable — painfully steep — but one line of text had my full attention, and it would not let go.

"Hah."

Insane performance. The kind of thing that could never exist in the real world. I'd be lying if I said I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠didn't hesitate, but this wasn't a luxury. This was a divine gift wearing a price tag.

"Pur… chase… Fuck!"

Even then, I couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger. A hundred million gold wasn't the name of somebody's dog. I knew what gold was worth now, and the knowledge put a cold sweat down my back. I wasted a good ten minutes dithering like an idiot before something else on the shelves caught my eye.

Wait.

A strategy clicked into place, vicious and beautiful. Kill the sound completely, and make the round itself out of air.

If I was going to buy them, it had to be now — while nobody in the world knew where I was. Pinch pennies like an idiot and die, and the story ends. Still, a man ought to brace himself before lighting this much gold on fire.

Both of them are consumables. The Air Bullets alone would burn a hundred thousand gold a shot. My grand strategy of holing up in a bedroom suddenly had a maintenance cost, and the second I started running both items as standard kit, gold income would stop being a hobby and start being a religion.

Enough. That's a full-stomach worry, and I don't have the luxury. I don't get ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a choice.

Until I found a skill or a method to replace either of them myself, the gold was going to flow. That was just the cost of staying alive.

"Purchase!"

Just like that, I had the two items I needed to stay alive. I only bought a hundred Air Bullets — the Training Ground still had to be paid for, and a man without an emergency fund is a man asking to die. After that, I decided the shop had nothing else that would guarantee my safety on the spot, and I left.

"Hhk…"

I'd spent a lot of money. And here I was, celebrating being rich. I already felt broke.

Two essential pieces of survival kit, sitting in my inventory. The gold had taken a beating. About sixty million remained.

Don't think about the gold. Is this really the time?

I made myself a promise: from now on, I would not hesitate over a purchase that was actually necessary. And that brought me to the last item on the list I'd prepared.

The Training Ground.

Thirty million gold to install a facility I genuinely needed — and because it was that much money, I read the description properly. What I found made my brain stall.

I didn't need anything else.

Immortal judgment.

I bought it on the spot.

"Ohh. Ohh. Ohhhhhh!"

Could a mood get better than this? I had finally found a space where I could actually, truly rest easy. The Training ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ground.

Train me. Right now. Please.

I could throw myself into it like a private in basic — crawl through the mud, get chewed up, the whole miserable nine yards. As long as I didn't die!

The message bloomed the instant the purchase went through — and then a blaze of light, the same one that had unfurled the Shelter, went darting through my apartment, mapping every wall and corner.

"Ohhhhhh!"

Ah. It's going to turn some part of the room into the Training Ground?

It swept the place for two, maybe three minutes, and then the light stopped. On my closet.

The Shelter already spat in the face of physics, so of course it was about to pull some fresh absurdity with a piece of furniture.

That's fast.

I didn't have to wait long.

A clean little chime, and a faint blue glow settled around the closet. D-did it work?

I stepped close and laid a hand on the door.

A small label sat above the closet, bearing the name. Let's go in.

I opened it with footsteps light from the promise of immortality — and stared.

"???"

A double door. Inside the closet sat an iron door that reeked of cold steel, a hard-lettered warning stamped across it.

"Yeah, whatever. Fine by me."

Meaning it couldn't be abused for anything but training, and that was none of my concern. I opened the door.

"Ohhhhh!"

An endless void unfurled in front of me. The floor was an infinite grid of white marble tiles — or something that wanted to look like marble — and beyond that, nothing. Black emptiness, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pure and simple. I glanced back. The door I'd come through stood alone in the dark, a single rectangle of exit in a place that had no walls.

"That's a little creepy."

But so what?

"YES!!!"

Look at that beautiful little qualifier sitting next to my HP. That was what immortal judgment looked like in writing: In Training. I stood there leaking tears of pure relief, and while I was busy being grateful to still be alive, another message rose in front of my eyes.

"Ohh!"

"Wait. I get to set this myself?"

The void existed because I hadn't chosen a map yet. Apparently the Training Ground would build whatever environment I picked, so I could practice sniping in every kind of terrain. I tapped See More and scrolled — and there it was.

"Oh."

A tempting option. It would reconstruct my real surroundings as a virtual field. I'm not taking a single step out of this room anyway. Practicing in a desert doesn't mean much right now.

It was a training ground. I had no reason to hesitate. I hit the button.

A rushing hiss of construction — and the void around me snapped, in a blink, into my studio apartment.

"Ohhh!"

"You've got to be kidding me."

Outside the window was the cityscape I saw every day: the Signiel in the distance, the high-rises clustered around it. It copied it perfectly.

Another message rose.

The default was robots, optimized for marksmanship practice. Distance and position could be set just as easily. I spawned a single Standard Bot nearby to get a feel for it.

A sharp whoosh — and a clean, angular training bot assembled itself in the air.

"Ohhh."

I had the hang of it.

"Ten Standard Bots, close range."

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

"Ten Aerial Bots and ten Standard Bots, long range."

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

"Ten Micro Bots, mid range."

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

I put them where they'd actually show up in a real fight. The Aerial Bots were bird-shaped machines, beating metal wings as they circled the positions I'd given them.

No time to waste. Before another Gate opens, I need this body to remember what a sniper is supposed to be. Sniper skill wasn't optional. I'll pass on leaving my survival up to luck.

Until the next Gate tore open, I was going to use everything I had. The skill, Pierce. The items, MMM and the Air Bullets. The weapon, the Practice Sniper Rifle. And above all, my own shooting.

I pulled the Practice Sniper Rifle from my inventory. It assembled into my hands in a scatter of pixels — grey barrel, green stock, my favorite piece of kit in the world.

Let's do this properly.

It even brought back the old feeling of army basic, and I meant to take it seriously. More than anything, the knowledge that I could not drop dead in here put a live current back through my nerves. Durability doesn't tick down in here. Consumables don't get spent. That's what it said.

First things first: I needed to see what MMM and the Air Bullets actually did.

I picked a Standard Bot I'd parked on top of a high-rise, fitted MMM to the rifle, thumbed a few Air Bullets into the magazine, and worked the bolt.

Clack.

From the window, I settled the sights on the bot, breathed out the way I would in a real fight, and fired.

Pssht—!

"!!!"

Shit. I missed. I'd aimed at one of the farther ones on purpose, but still. I'm going to need a lot of practice.

One thing, though: the performance of MMM and the Air Bullets was astonishing. The sound wasn't a perfect zero percent — more like a puff of leaking wind. No one but me would ever hear it.

That's enough.

I could snipe in peace. Run. You run when you still have the room to run.

I put rounds into training bots all over the field without a pause. Miss, adjust. Hit, zero the sights, fire again. A whisper of compressed air. A heavy, satisfying impact. As the hits started landing, I pushed the range farther, and farther, stretching my effective distance one shot at a time.

Hours later, a familiar chime cut through the rhythm of my shooting.

Ding.