Waiting for the Lord
Laex.
Last Exit.
Or just Laex, for short.
There were all kinds of playstyles in this game. There were the knight types, who tore through enemies in flashy gear; snipers who perched up high with long-barreled rifles and picked players off; and hunters who roamed in packs, preying on anyone foolish enough to travel alone.
But Wayo didn’t fall into any of those categories.
If you absolutely had to put a label on it, you’d call her a priest.
After all, didn’t she faithfully hold one spot and wait for the Lord’s gifts to descend?
“I wait for the Lord~”
Flat on her belly on the floor, she hummed the hymn her mother used to sing while running the vacuum.
“Huh? You wait forty minutes for a match and this is what bores you?”
As she said it, she looked over the gun she’d just looted off her opponent.
Mmm. The mods on this thing were gorgeous.
And the ammo loaded in it wasn’t half bad either.
“That’s still forever. Oh, and is there any fix for this ping?”
The developers did seem to be trying—matchmaking times were shrinking little by little. The problem was that the in-game connection kept hitching.
For the record, Wayo’s PC had been top-of-the-line a year and a half ago, so if she was lagging, it was a server issue.
“Tsk. What a hassle.”
The game servers were unstable so she had to go get a VPN?
What kind of—
“…I can’t get disconnected.”
Yeah. You wait thirty minutes for a match and then camp another twenty—you do not get kicked.
She’d have to look into a VPN later.
“Anyway. Shall we find the quest item and extract soon?”
Whatever. That was enough camping for now. She pushed herself up off the floor.
Had everyone else extracted already?
She couldn’t hear a single gunshot.
“No? I’m a proud Korean, thank you?”
Wasn’t camping Korea’s national martial art?
No? Shame, then.
“Oh, it’s fun all right. Can’t you see my gun?”
Look at that sleek barrel and those refined attachments.
This was the gun of the player she’d just camped and killed.
How was anyone supposed to not camp after this?
“Heh heh…”
It had been a full week since she’d started Laex.
She was completely at home in the game now.
Hold a position with devout patience, pocket the gift when it arrived, and when the time felt right, run the quest and extract.
What a beautiful loop it was.
Thump, thump.
“A new morning dawns~”
Humming the hymn like she owned the place, she walked until she stopped dead at the mouth of an alley.
“Well, you see.”
Click.
Without a second of hesitation she pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it into the alley.
And then…
Tadadak!
Footsteps erupted from inside, and a two-man squad came bursting out.
The camping duo spun around looking for whoever had thrown the grenade—but she was already flat on the ground.
“Go be with the Lord!”
BANG! BANG BANG BANG!!
Fire spat from the muzzle, and both of them crumpled where they stood.
“It’s a camping hotspot.”
How many times had she milked that exact spot for free kills?
Better safe than sorry.
“I didn’t want to play like this from the start either.”
But what was she supposed to do? The game itself had made waiting into an art form.
She was simply a smart player, aligning herself with the developers’ philosophy.
“What are you talking about? I’ve always been a genius.”
Hadn’t she proven that in Sherlock?
Just how much of a genius Wayo really was.
“Hoo.”
She blew the smoke from the barrel to cool it, then walked over to the bodies.
“Both of them are packing pretty nice kits.”
And those bags were huge—hauling all of this was going to be a real workout, wasn’t it?
“Tsk, what kind of talk is that? More importantly, I think I’m about to hit the weight limit…”
Having too much to loot was its own kind of problem.
She was still debating whether to pop the strength syringe she’d brought just in case when—
BANG!! BANG!!
[Ugh!]
Gunshots cracked right beside her, and her character’s vision lurched.
BANG BANG BANG!!
She spun on the spot and stitched a line of bullets across the attacker’s head.
[Gah!]
It was practically a pre-fire, but luckily the other player caught it full-on and dropped.
“Hoo, hoo. Wait—it was a three-stack?”
This vicious little shit. He’d been hiding until his teammates died?
“I thought I was dead, you bastard.”
She wrapped a bandage over the section of her health bar that had gone red, then gave the corpse a casual kick with her boot.
Nearly died to a first-shot ambush.
Still, the armor had held. She’d lived.
All hail the Class 5 ballistic plate.
Its previous owner had died with his legs shredded by trash ammo, but still.
“Yeah I used a little, is that not allowed?”
“God-tier hacks.”
“Hey, no need to talk like that.”
Grumbling, she looted the body of the player she’d just killed as well.
Looking at the haul, even with a syringe she wasn’t getting all of this out.
“Which of this stuff was expensive again…”
So she cherry-picked only the gun parts that actually sold for money and stuffed them into her bag.
Fortunately she’d been too busy camping to pick up scrap paper, so everything just about squeezed in.
“The wrecker? Oh, right.”
For the record, this game had a wrecker system.
Pay a fee, and after you died on the map, someone would recover your body for you.
“Should I?”
If another player stripped the gear first it was all for nothing—but they could always hope for the grace of a merciful user like herself.
Feeling quite pleased about it, she left behind the guns stripped of their expensive parts and the plate carriers with the ballistic plates yanked out, resting them on the players’ corpses.
Mmm. This was the heart of a true and faithful priest.
“Normally I’d take it all as the Lord’s gift, but I’m making a concession for fellow priests.”
“They’re friends who wait for the Lord’s gifts right alongside me.”
Right? They didn’t go out looking to kill first.
They sat in place and prayed for gifts—if that wasn’t a priest, what was?
“I am a very devout person.”
She didn’t go to church, but she believed in God in her own way.
I mean—she’d been reincarnated, hadn’t she?
You kind of had to believe in something spiritual after that.
Anyway. The remaining players were dealt with.
She casually finished the quest and extracted.
SURVIVED
“Ugh, why isn’t there a pro scene for this?”
Someone like her belonged in pro play.
Did Laex even have professional matches? Who knew.
“Humbled? Please. I’m the Camping Supervisor.”
Plant yourself on the map, camp, and if anyone starts causing trouble, educate them. That was a supervisor’s job if she’d ever heard one.
“Anyway, shall we call it here for today?”
The looting had been satisfying enough. She shut the game down.
Running since evening had left her stiff and sore.
“Tsk. Then should we do something else? It is the weekend.”
She happened to have a free schedule this weekend too.
Most people who worked on sets were regular employees, so shoots tended to pile up on weekdays. Sometimes a weekend got booked if things went sideways, but usually she was free.
…Well. Most of her viewers didn’t seem to care whether it was a weekday or the weekend.
Weren’t those the real free spirits?
“Alright, starting Part 2.”
Anyway. Part 1 of Laex was over, so of course there had to be a Part 2.
“I didn’t—I just thought of it…”
Saying so, she opened a browser window.
She’d meant to do this a bit later, but since it had come up, she might as well.
“For Part 2, I’m taking VPN recommendations. You all know the good ones, right?”
If the game could disconnect her, what choice did she have?
If she hated it that much, she could just get a VPN herself.
“Tsk. Come on, pull them out one by one.”
These people—please. She knew the deal.
Every guy had a dedicated VPN stashed in his pocket, didn’t he?
“Part 3… I’ll think about that slowly.”
So for now, they could start by pulling those VPNs out of their pockets.
She wanted to play without fretting over ping too, didn’t she?
Apparently with a VPN you could hop on European servers freely as well.
Wonder if there was a French one.
After about an hour of side-by-side comparisons and analysis, she bought the optimal VPN.
“I’m gonna go grab some water real quick.”
She paused the stream and left her room to get a drink.
“I wait for the Lord~”
VPN properly installed. In a good mood, she hummed the hymn from earlier as she went down the stairs.
No more disconnects when she played Laex, right?
The game had turned out more fun than expected—she’d probably keep at it longer than planned.
Being a stream, she’d have to play other games too, of course.
But for a while, maybe Laex would take the Part 1 slot instead of League?
Well. Their stream wasn’t professional enough to always plan out Parts 2 and 3 anyway.
There would be days she just played Laex the whole time.
“The dark night passes~”
Anyway.
She reached the kitchen on the first floor and rummaged through the fridge.
A little hungry from gaming all night—she’d grab something for a combined breakfast-and-snack and take it back upstairs.
“Hmm.”
She was still deciding between Rozelia’s salad and some dried fruit when—
“Ahyun?”
A voice so familiar it barely needed introducing came from right behind her.
“Mom?”
She turned around.
The living room lights were off.
Her mother stood there, a Bible in one hand, looking her way.