"Looks like they got teamed on." Said Dieu, two health bars on her interface quickly receded to red, before finally completely depleted, their profile pictures replaced with two glowing skull emojis.
"Interesting... Dieu, do you have their coordinates?" Asked Crecket. "Of course, we didn't make all of us bring along GPS tags for nothing." Dieu showed off a few clipping tags in her hands, blue lights blinking out of sync that indicated they were working perfectly fine.
"I just love how people never fail to fall for this. How many teams have we killed this way? 4? 5?" Mignon wondered with a giggle. Crecket pointed at his canines, mocking Dio's "How many loaves of bread have you eaten?" picture from forever ago. Dieu and Mignon burst into laughter, before quickly stifling it to prevent being found out.
"To be fair, we didn't spend 480 CAT on each person for these stealth implants for no reason! It took us ages to grind up that sum, and now we can just farm these sons of bitches of clones." Crecket shuddered when he recalled the countless hours they had to spend, painstakingly saving up each dollar. Just to save costs on food, they'd occasionally "reset themselves" - as they like to call it between themselves now - to skip out on the hunger. Freshly cloned clones, as it turned out, do not feel hungry for another couple of days.
They did not die, but death is still a type of trauma, and they've experienced it a dozen times, perhaps a couple dozen, all for the set of stealth implants they now have installed in them. Sure, they've made back the cost several folds through massacreing and looting dead teams, but every time they close their eyes, their souls would feel as if it's getting forcefully yanked out through the tip of their heads, their hearts would plunge and freeze over.
They could feel the scythe on their necks cut just ever so slightly deeper, Death's yearning for them, pulling their soul just that tiny bit closer to his Gates. And as Death slowly edges his scythe inwards, a bit of their souls fragment off into the abyssal depths.
Even when they were awake, a wave of amnesia they couldn't exactly pinpoint a cause would creep up occasionally. Vaguely, it felt like they were missing something core to them, like an interest they should've remembered but for some reason could never recall what it is. Or a relative that's close to them, yet their face they could never remember.
As if those memories were thrown into the void, never to be recovered.
Dieu, Mignon and Crecket continued to stay up on the treetops until twilight befell upon them, and as the sun set, as the night took over, did their target slowly reveal themselves - A faint glow, followed by white smoke. Cricket's heart did a small celebration, his assumptions were spot on, the enemy group was now within sight. To top it all off, now is when they have absolute advantage over any other plebian group.
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Crecket took out some pale blue crystals, all of them the size of small pebbles, and handed two of them to Dieu and Mignon. They slotted them into their magicrystal readers - an implant embedded just below the nape. The readers closed up, took a small while to read the magicrystals, and after a while all three of them're cloaked in a uncomfortable skintight coat of air.
"God, this spell in particular drains my nanites so quickly..." mumbled Dieu. For the magicrystal to be executed in reality, nanites are used to either materialize its effects, or alter the environment around it to mimic the effect. In this case, tiny air pumps were built on top of their skin to pressurize and push the air, while more nanites formed a thin molecular membrane around to trap the air. The membrane in particular required constant repairing and rebuilding to maintain its integrity, which makes up for the bulk of the spell's nanite usage.
With <
As they neared Sung's camp, they chose to instead hide themselves behind a berry bush, and go over their plans now that they have an idea of the number of people they're facing against. 5 is not a lot for them. Their worst fight was against a mixed team of 20, against the 3 of them plus their brawler and lancer, and had to resort to sniping their enemies with throwaway spears.
Meanwhile, unaware of guests, Sung was flipping over more fish. Miguel was clumsily setting up tents, Rin, Yoko and Jones meanwhile were having a heated argument over which anime was the peakest of peak fiction.
Crecket peeked out of the bush, and pointed at Jones. "That dude, he acts like a kid. I should start with him." He whispered to Dieu. "Ain't lettin' kids off the hook? That's cold." Joked Dieu. Crecket then pointed at Rin and Yoko, "Those two are probably girls, you two go take care of them." Finally, he shifted his focus over to Sung and Miguel. "Those two are definitely adults. They might be a bit harder to deal with, let's regroup and kill those two together afterwards."
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"Look at you, barking orders and everything. Getting comfortable as our leader?" Mignon asked with a sly grin. Just months ago, when they first arrived at the complex, Crecket was easily the most cowardly of them all, refusing to even hunt chicken as he feared their pecks would hurt.
Looking at him now, it is hard to believe that this is the same Crecket as the one a few months back. Perhaps the atmosphere of the complex's grown onto him, or perhaps the cloak's given him a few extra points in confidence. Either way, his trembling eyes before are now filled with firmness and determination.
"Shut up or I'll yank your implant out and throw you at them." Crecket hissed at Mignon. "Let's pounce when they go in their tents to sleep."
They continued to wait. Now that the sun is down, what little warmth left dissipated from the land, as they sat shivering on the snow. Air's a good insulator, but when the air for their cloak's already freezing to begin with, there's hardly any use for insulation.
Ironically, despite the warm glow from behind their berry bush, they weren't feeling any of the warmth from it. It seems, that although the insulating properties of air didn't protect them from the brisk night gusts, it did instead block them from receiving the campfire's warmth. Any survivalist would agree that, while humans can make use of nature to their own advantage, nature will always be out to kill humans. Despite being useful, nature is not an ally.
In spite of Sung's camp's joyous atmosphere, with Jones burning his tongue on some toasted marshmallows while Miguel, now finished with the tents, helping himself to some smores and fireside horror stories from Rin, Crecket's heart instead became even more hollow. A few more days, and it's a new year again, Crecket pursed his lips to try and hold back his tears. Tears not of sorrow, but of loneliness, as tape reels of unbearable memories started to play in his head.
His elder sister was the only family he had left. It was suffocating to be in school, nobody would try to even talk to him, nor did he make any attempts to fix that. To his class, to his school, it's as if he was invisible. And he left it to be that way. He preferred the loneliness, he was one with the shadows. He liked it when everyone left him alone.
He and his elder sister were alone with each other ever since he could remember. She would go uncharacteristically mum whenever he asked about their parents, while she would share every detail of her research with him, down to the supposedly confidential details.
To get funding for her project with another guy called "Edwin Sung", she met up and got together with a Japanese banker. Crecket did not know his name - she would not tell him, yet she would go on tirades about Sung. Her eyes glimmered as she gushed on how he cracked every impossible circuitry puzzle, extolled on their latest breakthroughs, which apparently would not have been possible without Sung's extraordinary machine coding knowledge.
Yet, she fell silent whenever the banker was around, her eyes dulled whenever he suggested corners that could be cut so he could pocket the difference. She looked as dry as an ancient Egyptian mummy whenever he complained about Sung, how his place could be replaced by an inexpensive AI that would've only costed them pennies for the electricity and dollars for the cloud servers.
She went out one night, Sung had figured out how to transfer appearances to the clones as well, apparently. The clone pod - The Cradle as they would call it - was ready for release. Yet, at the last second, the banker wanted it for himself. It was, after all, a device that would revolutionize the medical field - and absolutely destroy his insurance side-business.
Neither Sung nor the banker would budge, so the banker had ordered her to scrape the lab clean, and leave Hong Kong with him for Japan instead, where they would create an underground facility with these pods.
She never came back, neither was a note left behind. Crecket would pick up part time jobs to cover the rent, going as far as skipping school just to get extra shifts in, yet the money was never enough, and he was kicked onto the streets.
Christmas was especially tough to swallow down, families gathered in broad daylight, couples flirted without a care in the world, whereas he sat in the shadows of the vibrant city, cold, damp, stinky. He did not care, however, for the shadows make up his family. He wasn't alone, the dark side of the city provided for him company.
Depressed, and wanting a break from the scenery, Crecket went to the dumpster he frequented for leftover food, yet there stood a man in his 40s, a step quicker than him, now rummaging through his bin. He saw as the man fished out a half-eaten rotisserie chicken, a robot pet dog, and fliers after fliers of something, something that made the man hopping mad.
The man left the chicken behind, took the fliers, and rushed back to his spot, coincidentally just round the corner from Crecket's cardboard fort. Delighted, he snatched the chicken, and went back while knawing at the neck of the chicken. That night, his shadow connected with the weird man's, he felt, strangely, as if he's finally not alone anymore, that he's got someone to be with, at long last.
The next morning, though, he was already nowhere to be seen. Everyone eventually leaves him behind, Crecket thought, this is nothing new. He could not, however, shake of the lingering regret, as a new wave of loneliness, with intensity he had never experienced up until then, crashed onto his shores.
He could not remember why, but he grabbed the flyers the weird man had left behind, filled in his name and such, before using his own savings to mail it over. It felt like it was something he should be doing, as if a strange connection was nagging at him, pulling his strings. As if, he wouldn't be lonely anymore in this weird complex.
Crecket looked at Mignon, then he turned to Dieu. Are they companions? They follow his orders, they work together as a team to murk new players off the map, but can he really rely on them? Did they not also neglect him the first time they met, until he showed his skills at hunting players?
His gaze shifted over once again to Sung's camp. How he longed for companions like that, just chilling, caring, a big family of unrelated people. His heart ached as if it's got frostbite, a chill which no warmth can thaw.
He would give up everything to feel the warmth of that warm, glowing campfire.
"Oi! They've been sleeping for a while already? Let's go in already!" Bemoaned Mignon.
He looked at them with bloodshot eyes, which they did not seem to have cared enough to notice. He may be able to use them for kills, but at the end of the day, the three of them only cared about themselves.
They may be beneficial, but they aren't allies. That's fine, he's used to this. After all, nobody's stayed with him, they all leave eventually. At least, for now, they can be used. With a heavy sigh, Crecket stood up and rubbed a frozen bead off his face.
"Let's go."