Chapter 3
The sniffing sound continued to get louder as the hound and its master got closer to the other side of the pod where Kayden was hiding. With no other choice available, Kayden steeled himself for what was to come next. He brought the loaded pistol up and gripped it in both hands, as he was trained to do in his time as a guard. He leveled the gun to where he hoped the beast would come around the corner. Kayden didn’t have to wait long to until the hound finally rounded the corner of the pod and locked eyes with him. The black-furred canine tried to growl, but Kayden quickly pulled the trigger. The pistol barked and there was a short yelp from the hound as the bullet pierced its brain and it fell to the floor, dead.
[You have killed Red Talon Hound! You gain 25 XP!]
“What the hell!” The scarred man shouted at the sight of his furry companion falling over.
Not waiting for another outburst, Kayden sprang from behind the pod in an attempt to get the drop on his second adversary. With his pistol out front, Kayden fired four more shots before hitting the ground,
[You shoot Red Talon Raider for 15 points of kinetic damage!]
The enemy, who Kayden now knew to be a Red Talon Raider, let out out a loud grunt as three bullets slammed into his chest. Kayden hit the ground and then scrambled to his feet still facing the raider. As he got his feet, he wondered why the man didn’t at least fall over, if not die. The raider regained his composure and looked to Kayden with a vicious snarl and murder in his eyes.
"You know, if it makes any difference, I took no pleasure in that! I actually like dogs!" Kaden said.
The scarred man then charged like a rabid animal.
"I guess not!" Kayden said as he took a step back in anticipation.
The raider drew a red, curved knife in one hand that he used to slash wildly at Kayden’s face. Kayden ducked and rolled away, but the snarling man still managed to catch him with a boot to the chest.
[You have been kicked for 7 points of kinetic damage! Remaining HP: 33/40!]
The kick sent Kayden sprawling on the floor and he was slightly dazed as he landed on his back. Shaking off the daze from the kick, Kayden came to his senses just in time to see the enraged raider leap into the air and come falling down like an angry meteor. Kayden rolled to avoid the descending strike. His gun was lost in the tussle, so he drew his knife and threw out a slash of his own. The raider tried to move to avoid the cut, but Kayden’s reach proved too great and he landed a cut on the man’s exposed neck.
[You cut Red Talon Raider for 12 points of kinetic damage! You have inflicted a bleed status!]
The raider clutched a hand to his bleeding throat in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. It didn’t help. The man let out a low gurgle and then fell to the floor in a lifeless heap.
[You have killed Blood Talon Raider! You gain 50 XP!]
Not long after the notification took over his vision, a strange feeling came over Kaden. The veins in his arms illuminated with blue light and a surge of energy hit him like a truck. He felt his muscles expand and his wounds mend as a sense of new-found energy took over him. A second notification gave him the answer to the question he was about to vocalize.
[Congratulations! You have advanced to Level 2!
STR +4, AGI +3, END +2, INT +2, PER +2, CHA +2
You have 6 skill points to spend! You are allowed to select 1 deed!]
Kayden fell backward and began to breathe heavily. Even though the level up restored his health, he still needed to take a breather. The level up message continued to float in his vision. After about a minute, Kayden pulled himself to his feet and began to think,
“Where should I put these points?”
Kayden opened his character menu and navigated to his skills. Each skill had a “+” symbol next to it which indicated that he could put points into it. First, he chose pistols and tried to place two points in it, but a message appeared,
[Your skill level cannot exceed your character level. Please choose another skill to increase.]
Kayden’s finger bent away from the window at the sight of the message. He shrugged and then went through his skills list again. In the end, he ended up putting a single point into pistols, rifles, unarmed combat, tracking, acrobatics, and melee weapons. When Kayden finished allocating his skill points, another message appeared,
[New class ability learned: Stagger Shot
Description: You are able to stagger your target with a ranged attack. If you hit your target with a melee attack within four seconds, you will do bonus damage.
Cost: 2 Resolve
Range: Variable
Cooldown: 6 seconds.]
Finally, Kayden moved on to select his first deed. The choices were limited since he was only level two. When it came to games like this Kayden had always gone for choices that would help in the present rather than picking something that would pay up in the future. After going through the list once, he circled back to the one that he thought would do the trick.
[Deed: Marksmanship
Effect: You are more accurate and do an additional +1 damage with ranged weapons. This deed can be taken multiple times.]
Kayden closed his character menu after giving it a final look. He then turned to the corpse of the Red Talon Raider. After getting close enough to the body, a prompt appeared asking him if he wanted to loot the body. Kayden selected “yes” and everything the raider was holding showed up on a screen in his vision. The raider had the red, curved knife, 47 credits, and a pair of gloves. The red blade, which was named a red claw karambit, was not an upgrade to his current knife so he just pocketed it to trade later. The fingerless gloves were made of black leather and had a thin sheet of metal over the backhand area and metal studs attached to each of the knuckles. Kayden gave the gloves a closer inspection,
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[You have found Hard Knuckle Gloves!
Quality: Basic
Rarity: Uncommon
Damage Resistance: +2
Upgrade Slots: 1
Traits: +1 Strength, +4 Unarmed damage
Description: These gloves have metal studs embedded in them that serve to increase damage done by punches.]
Kayden gave a soft whistle. The gloves were definitely an impressive upgrade to his current hand gear. He didn’t even hesitate to put them on. After flexing his hands a few time to break in his new gloves, Kayden walked over to the hound and looted it as well. It only gave up a black fur pelt and two fangs. As soon as he was about to identify the pelt and fangs, the sound of gunfire in the distance caught Kayden’s attention. He snapped his head in the direction the sound came from and proceeded to jog toward the fray.
…
After about five minutes of jogging, Kayden peered around a corner to see the same raider who was accompanying the one he killed earlier. The man wore the same outfit as his partner and had the same red claw mark on his chest armor. The raider was pressed against the corner of a building as a single shot came from an alley several yards away. Kayden was hiding behind the wall of a collapsed building as he observed the situation. From his position, he could see the raider poking his head out every so often to get the shooter to take a pot shot at him. Whoever this mystery shooter was, it was obvious that they would soon run out of ammo and that raider would move in for the kill. That’s what it looked like he was planning anyway. Whoever that raider was stalking was in trouble and Kayden wasn’t going to let that bastard have his way. He ejected the magazine from his pistol to check his remaining ammo.
“Five bullets. I can work with that.” Kayden said to himself under his breath.
He slammed the mag back into the gun and then flicked the safety off. Kayden took a breath in and then exhaled as he prepared. In a fit of inspiration, Kayden then drew his combat knife in his off hand as he remembered his new deed. With as much preparation as he could muster, Kayden emerged from his hiding spot and fired two shots from his pistol. He activated Stagger Shot after firing the second bullet and the raider’s body slammed against the wall of the building from the force of the bullets. After the second shot left his gun, Kayden charged the raider with his knife extended. The NPC regained his senses just in time to get a knife to the shoulder.
[You shoot Red Talon Raider for 6 points of kinetic damage! Your stagger shot has stunned the target!
You stab Red Talon Raider for 4 points of kinetic damage!]
The raider hissed in pain, then threw a fist into Kayden’s face.
[Red Talon Raider hits you 10 points of damage! Remaining HP: 50/60! ]
Kayden staggered back from the blow. The moment of distraction gave the raider enough time to level his pistol at Kayden’s face. Out of reflex, Kayden ducked and slammed his shoulder into the raiders sternum. The raider was forced back four steps out of his cover. As the enemy recovered, he brought his gun back up to aim at Kayden's face., In the excitement, he forgot about the mysterious second combatant and he was shot in the head.
[Red Talon Raider has been killed! You receive 17 XP!]
The next thing Kayden knew he had a dead, headless enemy in front of him that he didn’t kill. He knew the other shooter had to be on edge from the fight, so rushing out to say “hello” would be a guaranteed way to get shot. Stepping closer to the corner, Kayden quickly thrust both his hands from behind the wall he and the raider were tussling.
“Wait!” Kayden shouted as he held both hands out.
No more shots came. Kayden steadily eased his way out of the cover of the building. When his body was fully exposed, he began to walk forward slowly while keeping his arms raised in the air.
“That’s fine right there!” Toned a voice from the direction Kayden was walking.
He stopped walking and stood still with his hands up as he noticed movement coming from behind a damaged vehicle. Another player stepped out into his vision. They wore a black mask over the lower half of their face. They also wore a set of the basic starter gear similar to what Kayden was wearing, except their gear was all black. They carried a long, scoped rifle in their hands as they stepped forward to meet Kayden at the other side of the street, not far from the raider’s corpse.
The other human used one finger to move their mask down from their face. Kayden was somewhat shocked to see a woman with long black hair, tanned skin, and silver eyes standing in front of him. After she removed her mask, a nameplate appeared over her head.
[Name: Neela
Class: Shadow Operative
Level: 2]
Neela eyed Kayden up and down trying to either size him up or, more likely, figure out if he could be trusted. It was a safe assumption since he was looking at her trying to figure out the same things. Eventually, he just decided to break the ice.
“Nice shot,” Kayden stated with a small smirk.
The woman nodded. She resumed walking in his direction only to veer slightly to the side toward the corpse of the raider.
“Thanks,” She responded. Then she eyed him warily.
Kayden dropped his hands to his sides.
“I heard your gun shots from a ways off and came running. He was pretty focused on forcing you to waste your ammo, so I was able to get the drop on him. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked, but luckily you seem to be a hell of a shot with that thing.” Kayden said as he gestured first to the raider and then to Neela’s long rifle.
She just nodded and then dropped down to a knee in next to the raider’s corpse. A moment later, she stood.
“The rest of this is no good to me. It’s all yours if you want it,” Neela stated as she gestured to the dead body.
Kayden raised an eyebrow as walked around to the opposite side of the dead enemy and started the looting process.
[You have found Raider’s Scattergun
Damage: 4-8 (Decreases with range)
Quality: Standard
Rarity: Common
Traits: 5 foot spread, 5 foot range, kinetic damage]
[You have found Raider’s Long Knife
Damage: 6-12
Quality: Standard
Rarity: Common
Traits: Serrated (more likely to cause bleed status)]
[You have found 24 Scattergun rounds!]
[You have found 20 credits!]
Kayden stood up and immediately equipped the long knife and scattergun. The scattergun bore a close resemblance to any other double-barreled shotguns Kayden had seen before. However, the two barrels were stacked vertically to one another instead of resting side-by-side. The firearm itself was just over two feet in length and had a semi-crescent shaped grip that was wrapped with a thin layer of cloth, supposedly for grip. The long knife looked a bit like an old school machete. The size was comparable to two of Kayden’s current combat knives if they were stacked end to end. The blade was single-edged and, just as the name stated, the back was covered in sharp serrations. When Kayden equipped the long knife, it took the place of his shorter combat knife and holstered itself on his back rather than at the base of his spine like his old blade. The scattergun appeared with a holster on his left thigh. Before moving on, Kayden pulled the new firearm and loaded it with two scatter rounds from the raider’s corpse.
“What did you get from him, if you don’t mind me asking?” Kayden asked the other player.
No response came. Kayden pulled his attention from his newly acquired gear to see that the sniper was already making her way further down the street at an even pace. Kayden thought about calling after her, but then thought it best to just let her go. Some people just want to play alone. It’s what he was doing after all.
Kayden watched her go for a few seconds before allowing his attention to drift to a large building near the center of the city. It stood just over twice the height of every other structure nearby. Looking at the structure, Kayden deduced that Neela would either go there to have a high vantage point for sniping or it could serve as somewhere she could set up her own signal beacon. Either way, it seemed like a good place to check out later. Until then, Kayden decided to do some exploring. He looked to the corpse of the Red Talon Raider on the ground. It was clear that they wera e problem that needed to be taken care of. Maybe he’d meet other players with the same mindset as him, maybe not. Kayden knew one thing, he had just under 24 game hours before he had to make his way off planet. He would use that time make these raiders’ lives a living hell. With that thoug,ht Kayden reloaded his pistol with a fresh magazine. He racked the slide with a mischievous grin and started to walk further into the cityscape.
“Time to do some work.”