Qi Lin organized his backpack, then checked his remaining ammunition. For the AK47's 7.62mm rounds, he still had 80 bullets left. But for the 98k's 7.92mm ammunition, none remained.
He tossed the extra supplies and the 98k that no longer fit in his pack onto the off-road vehicle. Just as he was about to climb in, a dangerous premonition, honed through years of battlefield experience, suddenly gripped him. His whole body jolted, and he instinctively retreated more than ten meters
"Boom!!!"
At the very moment Qi Lin pulled back, the entire off-road vehicle erupted into a massive fireball. A shattered steel plate shot through the air, embedding itself deep into his thigh.
"Your right leg has suffered a penetrating injury. -19 HP. Movement speed reduced by 27%. Right leg strength reduced by 60%. Entered bleeding state: -5 HP per minute."
"Hss—!"
The agony was unbearable. In this game, the pain simulation was set to one hundred percent, designed to forge true survivors of the wasteland. Dragging his injured leg, Qi Lin scrambled on all fours into the convenience store of the gas station.
"An RPG rocket…"
He recognized the weapon instantly, a devastating yet simple-to-use armament. Before the nuclear war, it was especially beloved by illegal armed groups across the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
Still, by his estimation, the attacker probably only had the one shot. After all, the game had only just begun. If someone had been authorized by the system's A.I. to start with a stockpile of rockets, then dying to that wasn't even unjust.
Qi Lin pulled up his collar and clamped it tightly between his teeth. He quickly dug a roll of bandages out of his backpack with one hand. With his other hand, his thumb and forefinger gripped the steel shard embedded in his thigh, while his middle and ring fingers held a 7.62mm bullet.
Clenching his jaw so hard that the fabric fibers snapped between his teeth, he yanked the fragment free. In the same instant, his little finger twisted off the bullet's casing, spilling the gunpowder onto the wound. Then, striking his Swiss Army knife's flint.
"Tss—"
A spark flared, scorching flesh and filling the air with the stench of burning meat.
He lost another 3 HP due to the burn, but the bleeding state was halted.
Carefully, he wrapped the wound with bandages. Then he picked up a shard of glass from the ground, extended it past the wall, and used the reflection to scout outside.
The wasteland was empty as ever. A wind was picking up, carrying yellow dust that further reduced visibility.
"Wound successfully bandaged. +10 HP. Movement speed +15%. Right leg strength +25%. Talent skill [Battlefield First Aid] unlocked. Proficiency: 10%."
"Battlefield First Aid?"
Qi Lin was surprised the game even had such a talent skill. On real battlefields, this was standard training—mercenaries especially had to learn it, since unlike regular armies, they couldn't always count on a medic to save them.
The wound was dealt with, but the attacker who had fired that rocket? After the single shot, he seemed to have vanished into thin air. Not a single sound since.
If not for the burning wreck of the off-road vehicle outside, and the stabbing pain in his thigh, Qi Lin might have thought the rocket had been nothing but a hallucination.
An enemy hidden in the dark wasn't frightening. But an enemy hidden in the dark, who was patient? That was far more terrifying.
Five hundred meters north of the gas station, two men in black trench coats crouched behind a boulder taller than a man. One of them clutched an empty RPG launcher.
"What now? That bastard's awareness is insane, we still didn't finish him!" The rocketeer's face was twisted with frustration. That rocket had cost him a whopping 1,500 resource points from the system's A.I. store. If not for trying to get in good with Luo Chengfeng and the Luo Consortium behind him, he would never have wasted such a weapon on some poor kid who was clearly from the slums.
"You aimed too long. I think he might be a retired soldier, guys like that can sense killing intent better than anyone. And didn't you find it strange? Even if Luo Chengfeng's team was busy fighting a Boss, how could some unarmed slum kid sneak up, ambush them, and steal the Boss kill? If they had spotted him earlier, they would've dumped a magazine into him before he even knew what hit him."
The second man had a silver Desert Eagle strapped to his hip. Cradled in his arms was a strange, makeshift weapon: a construction-site nail gun, modified into a lethal tool. Fired at close range, its steel nails could punch through a human skull. Ammunition was cheap and everywhere, an endless supply.
"So what? Let's rush in and finish him. He's alone, and injured!" the rocket man snapped, drawing a combat knife nearly twenty centimeters long.
"Are you an idiot? He's got the terrain advantage, and he's packing an AK. Out here in the wasteland, with so little cover, you'd just be a target. Better to wait until we have more people. I just got word that some rich brats from Shelter No. 4 are nearby. Apparently, they're curious to see the guy who managed to humiliate Luo Chengfeng."
Nail Gun Man muttered while pulling a pair of binoculars from his bag. He tried to peer into the convenience store, but the lighting was too dim. He could barely make out the massive corpse of the Zombie King, everything else just shadows.
"Shelter No. 4? That's where the pre-war politicians lived…"
Nail Gun Man sighed irritably, stowing the binoculars before tapping on his wrist-mounted system A.I. The bounty on player 9527 had just been doubled, from 1,000 resource points to 2,000, by the enraged Luo Chengfeng.
"Looks like Luo Chengfeng's really pissed this time. Two thousand resource points."
The Central Zone served as the buffer between the rich districts and the slums. Its residents lived better than the slum dwellers but were nowhere near the opulence of the wealthy. Most worked as service providers to the rich or low-level managers in the big corporations' factories. They could at least keep food on the table. Unlike the slums, where every meal was bland synthetic food, and a bad week without resource points meant outright starvation.
If Qi Lin had already reached Level 3 and unlocked the micro A.I.'s Bounty Platform, he would have been shocked to see that a 2,000-resource-point bounty mission had been pinned to the top.
And no fewer than 170 players had already accepted it!
The mission: Kill player 9527!
And these 170 players weren't just anyone, they were all from the wealthy districts. To reach Level 3 so quickly after launch, they'd spent vast amounts of resource points. For them, the bounty itself was just pocket change. What really mattered was the power behind it.
The Luo Consortium.
(End of Chapter)
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