Post by Ryker on Jul 28, 2014 21:22:37 GMT
“Tch.” The sound of agitation echoed out into the blackened room, followed briefly by the sound of hollow metal striking the floor. Clothing rustled, lead jingled, metal snapped together. A finger waived over a safety release and a deep breath was taken…. Slow… Steady… Release.
BANG.
The bone shaking, ear shattering sound of a rifle splitting the sound barrier boomed into the air as a silhouetted figure was illuminated for only a second; his eyes were cold, his body was still, and his finger was settled taut on the trigger of his rifle. The black clothing he wore allowed him to blend easily with the shadows around him, camouflage, and his target that stood a mile and a half away had no idea what hit him. Well, he didn’t know until his face was pierced by the high velocity, high explosive, fifty caliber round. The opposing player stood for only a second, like a bleeding trophy, before his knees gave out and he collapsed into digital pixels. The sniper grinned and pulled back on the bolt of his rifle, feeding the next round into the chamber as the initial one popped free.
“There! In the skyscraper!” One of the six remaining targets twisted around their heels and took cover, their weapons trained on the sniper’s location. However as they opened fire, their shots were wide, ill-trained, and nowhere near the shooter’s location. With a silencer across the front end of his barrel, there was no muzzle flash, no echoing bang which went beyond twenty meters, and there was no smoke. The shooter was invisible. Rather than jump from being fired upon, he remained still. A steady hand, a heart of ice, he stayed in that bullet hell. He trusted his instincts, his training, and his profession.
The next shot would not be as easy as the first, however, so he remained patient. With his scope dialed into the range of twenty-four hundred meters, or a mile and a half, the sniper balanced his breathing with the wind. One eye was focused down the scope, while the other looked through the air without any assistance. With that scoped-eye watching his target and another watching the environment, a systematic calculation began to run through the player’s mind. Variables like wind, bullet drop, counter movement, a variable of randomness, a variable of his own movement, his breathing, and even the actions of all players within the mile and a half bubble were put into the equation. All for one shot which needed to be perfect. It took time, but the sniper had plenty of it. So he remained calm, quiet, steady… Cold.
The solution came together like a thousand piece puzzle, and the solution was bloody. As the target opened fire, the sniper narrowed his eyes. He took in a deep breath and eyed the barrel of his target’s submachine gun. He didn’t count the muzzle flashes but instead relied on his knowledge of the weapon. Five seconds passed… Ten seconds… Fifteen seconds… Twenty seconds; empty. The submachine gun’s barrel stopped firing. The player disappeared…
One-thousand-one… The shooter released a breath.
One-thousand-two… The sniper rifle kicked into the player’s shoulder.
One-thousand-three… The bullet sailed into the open air, arcing outwards towards its destination.
One-thousand-four… The target reappeared, his submachine gun reloaded and ready to fire.
One-thousand-five… The bullet prediction line appears in his eyes, which open wide in response.
One-thousand-six… Impact.
Before he can react to the red line painted on his forehead, the round bore a hole through his digital skull. His ability to fight was vaporized and the man fell to the ground, lifeless, where he lay just long enough for the game to denote him as dead. The sniper, on the other end of the shot, smirked and pulled on the bolt of his rifle once more as to release the empty round and replace it with a fresh one. The movement was fluid and practiced as if the man’s left hand had performed the motion a million times before. Sadly, he had. This game was not the first time he had held a rifle, fired one, or killed a fellow man. No. His actions in this game, Gun Gale Online, were not his first times. They were his hundredths, his thousandths. They were not foreign to him, they were second-nature.
Putting the sights of his rifle down on his next target did not affect his conscious; they did not make him sad. There was no emotional consequence or any moral pain he felt for squeezing the trigger. Nothing bothered him about the idea of putting down an enemy, for he had been trained to do so. Years of fighting in reality had made him strong, bold, and confident in himself. He had a job to do in reality and he did those jobs without question. Now, in the world of GGO, he had another job; win. That was all. Plus, this was a game. There was no gore like in reality, no flesh being pierced, and no internals being pasted against the walls. There was no death. There was only respawning…
As time passed and the battle drew on, four rounds echoed out of the room the sniper lay in and four bodies hit the sand in response. The ancient city which was just alive was now quiet except for the steady breathing of the man with the rifle. His pulse was slow and his eyes dry from him not blinking enough, but he was unaffected by either of those. He had become so used to not moving that his body could have remained in the statue-like position for hours. Thankfully, other people in the world he was in were not as skilled as he so there was no need to do so, well, there were none for now.
With the battle over, the man closed his eyes and drew in a deep, warm breath of fresh air to collect his thoughts which he had suppressed during the fight. He lifted himself off the floor to a kneeling position and began to gather his gear which had been placed around him in a very organized manner; two magazines to his left, binoculars to his right, six singular heavy rounds beside the magazines, rope coiled up to his back right, and a shining handgun and a knife to his direct left. Once he had all his gear deposited into his magical game inventory rather than into a rucksack, the player lifted up his black rifle and made his way out to the massive hole in the building in front of him. The distant sunlight filled his eyes and revealed the body of the assailant; tall, battle tested, tired.
The sun was warm and bathed the cold killer in a gentle embrace, reminding him that there was always light in the dark. It was a pitiful thing to remember, but it was one of the little things. Those little things kept him together, so he did not bother scorning them like he did other things. Though, he wished he could have enjoyed the view. It was a beautiful one. He had one more job to do for the day, and he could already see it in the distance; a man who snapped the reins on a camel moved steadily through the left side of the ruins the sniper occupied and two other players moved beside the cart, weapons at the ready. Yet as ready as they were, it would not save them.
Pulling his rifle back against his body, the sniper faded back into the room he stood in and vanished. It was time to make someone’s day…
To be continued...
