Dan didn’t know how it happened. Maybe the notification had already reached him but he hadn’t been paying attention. But a blinking yellow icon in his peripheral vision finally caught his notice and he opened it.
Congratulations!
You have reached Tier 1 | Level 10
1000 credits awarded.
You have a total of 18 stat points to use.
Dan was no longer in the starting tier. But he had no time to celebrate or feel proud of himself. Right now, he had to find a way to kill those Kodak agents outside and survive this mess. He pulled up his stat menu and began figuring out where to allocate his points.
Strength: 10
Agility: 11
Endurance: 15
Intelligence: 10
Supernatural: n/a | Supernatural stat is not yet available. Agent level too low.
He recalled during his first mission where he allocated stat points into intelligence, which had allowed him to come up with a plan to disperse the violent rioters. Dan didn’t have the firepower to take on that entire Kodak squad directly. He decided he would need all the brainpower he could get to outsmart his enemies.
Strength: 10 (+5)
Agility: 11 (+5)
Intelligence: 10 (+8)
Congratulations. Your updated stats are now:
Strength: 15
Agility: 16
Intelligence: 18
You have spent all of your stat points.
At first, Dan didn’t notice any big changes, just a slight tingling sensation throughout his body, specifically his muscles, because of the points he put into strength and agility. But then it happened.
Time seemed to slow down around him. The unintelligible conversation outside slowed to a grind. Chunks of insight and scenarios flashed into his mind. His current circumstances, his enemy’s numbers and equipment, his potential options all cramped into the span of an eye blink.
In just a moment, a path opened up for Dan. A path to survival, a plan to turn the tide and kill his enemies.
Dan received another notification.
Your reflex stat has been updated.
Reflex: Average ++
Everything around him resumed back to normal and Dan was left on the floor. He looked to his left and saw the bathroom sinks and the mirrors. He stood and went to one of the sinks. He knew exactly what his next moves were.
Dan caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirror. He saw focused eyes staring back at him. He swore they had changed from his natural hazel to a bright glowing red.
He shoved his elbow into the mirror and shattered it. Pieces and shards clattered into the sink and onto the floor. Dan saw bolts of red bioelectricity swirling around his forearm before the strange energy dissipated. His mind was focused with such intense concentration on the laughs outside that he ignored this strange phenomenon.
He rummaged through the little pile of pieces in the sink and grabbed the sharpest and most jagged shards he could find. He took four before he was satisfied. His HUD popped up a message.
Mini challenge: Eliminate three enemies using unconventional weapons.
Bonus experience will be awarded. Good luck.
Dan slowly walked towards the collapsed wall across the bathroom. He reached into his pocket but remembered he had used up both his impact grenades and smoke grenades. But for now, he had what he needed to turn the tide.
He reached the wall and put his back against it. Dan leaned out slightly to observe his enemies on the street. Somehow, the Kodak agents were still bickering amongst themselves, boasting who was going to kill or injure him first. He held onto the jagged shard in his hand.
Had he been a lower rank, he wouldn’t have been crazy enough to do this. But with his increased strength stat and the buff to his intelligence, which also improved his coordination, he was confident he could pull this off.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Dan leaned out and whipped the mirror shard down the building, aiming for the Kodak agent with the grenade launcher. The agents were still distracted. Combined with the darkness and overcast skies and thunder in the background, no one saw the attack coming.
Dan watched intently as the shard of jagged glass sliced open the throat of the Kodak agent and he fell to his knees clutching his neck.
Conversation immediately ceased as the agents, shocked, watched one of their own fall to the ground. From Dan’s perspective, all of this happened slower than usual as he threw the second shard. This one was a straight bullseye, embedding itself into the eye of another agent.
Dan’s feet moved and he jumped out from the damaged window onto the streets. He was confident he would survive the six story drop. He threw another shard in midair and hit another Kodak agent, lodging the shard right into her throat.
By the time Dan’s feet hit the ground, only two Kodak agents remained, Samantha and one other. By now, they had fully comprehended what was going on and immediately scattered.
To Dan’s shock and disappointment, he saw Samantha run. Not for cover, but straight down the street and turning the corner into the alleyway. The red outline around her silhouette eventually disappeared. She had fled the scene.
Dan focused his attention on the last Kodak agent, who ran towards the nearest truck parked on the other side of the street and hid behind it. Dan saw his enemy poke their head out, and he threw his last remaining mirror shard.
The shard missed, but it impacted the hood of the truck and caused her to flinch. This gave Dan the moment he needed to close the distance and reach the truck. He hopped over the hood and kicked the agent.
She quickly recovered and regained her stance, delivering rapid fire punches to keep Dan from approaching her. While it worked, she didn’t anticipate that Dan had seen this trick before.
Whether it was performed by inexperienced gangsters or Dan himself, this move might have scared off some people by forcing the opponent to back off, but as an enhanced agent, Dan was undeterred.
Dan simply bent his knees and rushed the agent. He ducked under the barrage of punches and lunged towards the agent’s stomach. He successfully tackled her, and they both hit the sidewalk. Dan’s face narrowly avoided the spikes jutting out from her upper torso.
Wanting to end the fight quickly, he remembered the new and upgraded knife Jane had given him at the start of this mission. He pulled it from its sheath in the upper left side of his coat.
Dan delivered a shallow cut to the Kodak agent’s cheek just to see how potent the poison was. Within a few seconds, she convulsed, her eyes rolled towards the back of her head and she stopped struggling. She died a moment later.
He stared at the lifeless corpse. A small cut had killed her. Dan looked at the blade and was surprised and unsettled at the power of the poison.
He stood back up and hopped over the truck. He had a moment to take in his surroundings. Kodak agents lay dead around him except for Samantha, who’d fled. Not only had he survived, but he’d won.
Dan stared at the corpses of his enemies. He didn’t enjoy taking lives. But like all the previous instances, he’d had no other choice.
Dan caught movement at the corner of his eye and prepared for Samantha’s return. He looked up only to see the same woman and her child had exited the building.
The boy looked at him and waved. Dan waved back, happy to see the kid was on his feet after healing him with his last stim. His mother didn’t share the same gratitude. She stared at him and her face turned into shock before she turned around and pulled her kid with her. The two ran away and disappeared into a nearby alley.
Dan couldn’t blame her. He was standing in the midst of other dead agents. He would have been more unsettled if a normal civilian looked at him and didn’t get frightened.
Regardless, he was glad those two made it out alive.
The rumblings of thunder became more and more frequent. Dan bent down and scooped up the grenade launcher. He rummaged through the corpse of the agent and grabbed a few more grenades off him. He loaded his new launcher before placing the weapon across his back.
He checked the other dead Kodak agents and grabbed a ZK-77 rifle. How a Kodak agent managed to steal an Alpha-branded weapon was anyone’s guess, but Dan didn’t complain. Allen claimed the seventy-seven was superior to Kodak’s CMA rifle in every way.
Dan closely scrutinized the dual bayonets of the seventy-seven. The blades weren’t conventional blades at all, just simply pointed spikes that extended almost forty centimeters forward. These things could skewer anyone unlucky enough to be on the other end.
He grabbed whatever magazines he could find on the agent’s body before moving onto the last agent.
The last one didn’t have anything noteworthy except for a sword, which he took it from its sheath off the agent’s belt. After removing it from its sheath, Dan saw it was a modest blade. It was single-edged and around two and a half feet in length. But Dan noticed some faint while electricity running through the blade.
Curious, Dan tested it out by swinging it in the air a few times. The weapon made a strange voosh sound as it slashed the air. He then moved on to striking a car with it. To Dan’s shock, the blade easily cut through part of the hood and bisected the side-view mirror. Half of the mirror fell and smashed onto the pavement.
Dan looked at the blade more closely, wondering what the white arcs of electricity were and how they affected the sword’s cutting power. Maybe once he survived this whole mess, he could bring the weapon back to Alpha and get an answer. But for now, it was another tool in his arsenal.
The thunder above eventually gave way to bright lightning strikes that would flash and illuminate the entire street for split seconds at a time. A light drizzle blanketed the area. Then the rainfall intensified and became a true rainstorm.
Mini challenge completed!
Bonus experience rewarded.
Dan returned the sword back to its sheath and placed it on his back. He grabbed the ZK-77 rifle and clenched his new rifle tightly. Whether his teammates were alive or dead, Dan still had business to take care of in this city. If necessary, he would complete the mission on his own and try to manage some kind of win from this mess.
Through the rain, Dan pushed on, his HUD setting a new waypoint for him.