Chapter 20: Battle in the Lava Crossroads! Finale

“Marcuuuuss, yoooouuuuuu…” As I comfort her, Ana immediately answers me but suddenly a change occurs in my mind and her voice turns deep and distant.

While I’m crouched behind the pile of sandbags, everything around me stops and begins to lose its color. If I look closely, I could see that in reality nothing has stopped, rather is moving slow, extremely slow. As this is happening, I close my eyes and my mind is filled with several dozens of thoughts, each one of them start to swirl at a fast pace. Although having dozens and dozens of thoughts could cause chaos in any mind, I was experiencing the opposite, instead of chaotic my mind feels peaceful, relaxed, and calm.

This state of mind is known as “deep consciousness,” I have only experienced it twice before. I tried to learn more about this deep consciousness but I couldn’t find any relevant information about it. Although special, this state of mind is not something I can experience willingly, I can’t control it, and I’m barely aware of it.

‘The S-A-S formation (Sniper-Assailant-Striker) relies mainly in the power of the Sniper to be so hard to counter, my only chance is to distract the Sniper for at least 2 seconds, however that’s easier said than done.’ As I think about this, those several thoughts start to convulse in my mind. Some of them become clearer and others dissipate. Those that become clearer are thoughts that can help me in the predicament in which I am and those that dissipate are thoughts that can’t help me right now.

My mind does dozens of simulations in an instant. I try to think of every possible move I can make with the limited arsenal I have: The Light Plasma Carbine, the Advanced Piercing Plasma Saber, the Small Titanium Shield, and two Plasma Guns.

Every possible situation, every possible combination of weapons, I try to imagine the best outcome for me, an outcome where I kill one of them and position myself in the top three.

After reviewing hundreds of possibilities and although I said to Ana full of confidence that I’ll be in the top three, I can’t think of a situation favorable to me. Something in my mind is yelling me that right now the situation is hopeless, my weapons are insufficient, my luck has run out.

‘My weapons… My luck…’ I muter to myself in a low tone, still in deep consciousness.

“My… Weapons… My… Luck…” Those words flash in my mind restlessly again and again. Inside my mind it feels like I’m standing still in a dark world and those words are spinning and flashing in front of me.

“Weapons… Luck…” Suddenly a sliver of inspiration reorganizes all my thoughts. “Mine? What about…” As this sliver of inspiration enlightens my mind, outside everything starts to regain its color. Everything that was moving extremely slow start to move quicker and quicker until I return to my normal state of mind. The deep consciousness state only lasted for one tenth of a second, but it was more than enough for me to come with a plan.

The voice of Ana loses the deep tone it had in the slow motion and I could hear her sweet voice again, “… Can do it! I believe in you!”

“… Theirs!” I exclaim loudly, interrupting Ana.

“Uh?” Ana says confused, “Theirs? Theirs what?”

“Their weapons will be their undoing! More precisely, the Orbital Strike!” I point at the sky that is turning crimson red near my position. Immediately I store the Plasma Guns in the Carrier Orb, since it only has three available slots, I toss aside the Small Titanium Shield and equip the Light Plasma Carbine.

“Ana, Use repeatedly the pulse radar and inform me about their positions constantly.” I say while getting ready to go all out. They haven’t moved at all since I dodged the sniper shot, they are waiting for me to make the first move because, after all, they have the numbers and strategic advantage… Or so they believe!

I wait patiently for the last couple of seconds of this match. While I’m crouched, I observe the red glow of the sky attentively and soon I could see as a red column starts to rip the clouds in the sky, the orbital strike is imminent and this is precisely the moment I am waiting for!

I do a side roll leaving the protective cover of the sandbags, then I stand up and start running with all my might with the Light Plasma Carbine pointing at their rearguard: The Sniper!

Upon noticing me and that I’m carrying a mid-ranged weapon, their Striker retracts his deployable energy shield, equips a Battle Knife, and starts charging towards me. The Assailant and Sniper naturally start aiming at me, obviously the Assailant’s weapon is faster than the Sniper’s and opens fire much more quickly than him.

*Ba-Bang, Ba-bang.*

“You have received a body shot, energy shield depleted by 12%”

“You have received a body shot, energy shield depleted by 14%”

One of the two twin bursts shot by the Assailant misses while the other impacts in my torso. I start firing too, however, since I’m aiming too far for a mid-ranged weapon, my bullets only graze the Sniper and that’s far from enough to make him flinch. He almost has me in the perfect aim and is about to fire his Sniper Rifle, unluckily for him, right now I have the upper hand.

*BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.*

*BANG.*

The Orbital Strikes impacts the base of the bridge shaking everything violently with its might. The Sniper loses his footing and misses the shot. He tries to aim again but his mouth widens slightly, “Not good…” He says after noticing that they are in problems.

The Orbital Strike not only shakes everything upon impact, it envelopes everything in that hellish red glow, and for their misfortune, my metallic alloy reflects that red glow. If aiming while the ground is shaking violently is hard but possible, without having a clear view of your target it’s impossible.

The Striker reflexively cover his eyes while the Assailant tries to fire with low accuracy impacting me just a couple more of times.

Since I’m nearer the explosion, the ground I’m standing shakes more than the one they are standing. Although I don’t have the visual glow disadvantage because the explosion happened in my back, the fact that I’m charging lowers my accuracy even more. There’s no way I can kill them with the Light Plasma Carbine before the glow vanishes, so I decide to toss it aside.

“Equip Double Plasma Guns!” I command mentally and both weapons appear in each of my hands. I point them forward and issue a second command: “Cyclone Discharge: DOUBLE!”

A Plasma Gun cartridge can hold up to 150 plasma bullets, each of this bullets are fired at a rate of 1.3 rounds per second, meaning that in order to discharge the weapon you have to fire nonstop for almost two minutes (115 seconds). But, the Plasma Guns has a secondary function: the Cyclone Discharge. At the cost of lowering the accuracy by 70% and making the weapon unusable after the current cartridge is used, it increases the fire rate to 30 rounds per second, that’s twice the fire rate of a common Assault Rifle, using two Cyclone Discharges means that I’m firing the equivalent of four Assault Rifles!

*PRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT*

Both Plasma Guns start to spin madly while I do my best effort to follow my charge without letting my arms recoil. With the massive amounts of bullets the low accuracy is not really a problem. The reason I equipped the Light Plasma Carbine first was to make them think I wanted to fight with them with a mid-ranged weapon, so they would change the formation accordingly as they did. If I had the Plasma Guns equipped since the begging, they would just shot me to death from a safe distance and the Striker would have never come near me!

The Striker receives about ten plasma bullets and reflexively extends his deployable energy shield, however, the assault of two Cyclone Discharges are just too much and the shield breaks almost instantly. He tries to retreat frantically with fear, but in the midst of the violent shakes his body wobbles and he falls to his knees just to be obliterated by me.

“You have killed player Reke. Berserker State Lv. 1 activated for 5 seconds.”

“YES!” Ana rises her arms and cries jubilantly. In just four seconds I defied the common sense and secured a spot in the top three!

“Haha, it’s not over yet!” I say smugly.

“This brat!!!” After the red glow dissipated, the Sniper notices that not only the Striker is dead, he also notices that he has no line of sight to fire at me immediately because the Assailant is in the middle. That’s not a coincidence, with the help of Ana I purposely lined up and charged in a way where the Sniper, the Assailant, and I form a straight line.

While the Sniper tries to change his position, I use the last second of Cyclone Discharge towards the Assailant. As he sees me charging towards him he starts to retreat slowly while connecting some hits, my energy shields drop to 84% but it’s not like he is unscratched.

*BANG*

I am running straight to the Assailant and the Sniper successfully moves 4 steps to the side and connects a clean hit at me.

“Ha! The joke is on you!” I roar wildly. He is using a Tactical Ultima Rifle with high piercing bullets, this kind of Sniper Rifle completely pierces through Energy Shields and directly rips flesh and bones, in other words, it ignores the energy shields and directly damages the Health. But Battle Droid doesn’t have health points, in order to kill me he has to score a headshot or hit me in a circular zone of 30 cm radius in my chest, but his shot only impacted me near my stomach, this shot probably was deadly to any other race, but not for a Battle Droid.

Although the power of the Tactical Ultima Rifle is extremely frightening, it can only carry two bullets at once and has a reload time of 1.7 seconds per bullet.

I toss aside both Plasma Guns. “Equip Advanced Piercing Plasma Saber!” I command to Ana. That’s the last weapon in my inventory, I’m fifteen meters away from the Assailant and my energy shields are touching the bottom, however I have to give my all.

Suddenly the first after wave of the Orbital Strike happens. With a hole in the base, the bridge starts to collapse. The base which was sinking in lava slowly at first, it’s now sinking very fast and the slope turns very steep. The Assailant loses its footing slightly and stops shooting at me for split a second.

“Battle Boot Boosters!” In my last effort I activate my armor augmentation, it doesn’t matter if the terrain is plain or steep, with the Battle Boots Boosters I can charge unhindered!

The face of the Assailant turns ugly and pale, he quickly tries to aim at me again in midst of the violent movements of the bridge. The Sniper quickly reloads just one bullet and hastily aims at me.

*Ba-bang! Ba-bang! Ba-bang!*

“Sword Shadow!” I activate the advanced property of the Plasma saber while doing an upwards swing in the air. 20 sword after images appear evaporating all the bullets that makes contact with them.

*Clash, clash, clash, clash.*

Seeing how his attempts were in vain, the assailant falls powerlessly in his butt terror stricken, just waiting the inevitable. However, as he sits in the floor the Sniper finds a better angle to aim at me, “I got you!” Exclaims the sniper loudly.

“Too late!” I reply coldly.

*BANG.*

*Swiiish!*

“Critical hit, headshot. Decapitated player MadMan. Berserker State Lv. 2 activated for 7 seconds.”

“You have received a head shot, you are dead.”

“Match over. Congratulations player Kortef, you successfully occupied the second place!

END OF CHAPTER 20.

Hey guys.

As I said, from today onwards the pace of the releases will be steady, there will be a minimum of 7 chapters per week at least during four weeks. 7 per week, not 1 daily, it's almost the same, but not the same. This means that if I skip one day, in the next days there will be a double chapter, and viceversa, if I release a double chapter, I'll probably skip a day.

Hope you enjoy!