Needless to say, I woke up in the same place yet again. The white gun was already waiting on my lap. At this point, I was convinced I’ll keep repeating this cycle over and over and over.

How do I get out? If I were to trust Jack’s words, I’d have to survive through this “game”. It sounded bogus, but apparently everybody else believed it. It was difficult to strike a conversation with others amidst the chaos, but their actions spoke louder than words.

Everybody eagerly hunted each other down without rest. I couldn’t imagine so many people resorting to violence without a good reason. A great reward surely awaited the winner. Hopefully, said reward included being released from this infinite loop.

In short, I had to eliminate everybody else and be the last man standing. Simple, but hard. With so many enemies around, what were my chances to last until the end?

For now, I stuck to my camping strategy. It sounded like the plan with the highest survival chance, hence the highest winning chance. There was no reason to actively hunt enemies, for they’ll thin themselves out even without my help.

With that decided, I sought the nearest hiding spot. Sometimes I hid behind big rocks, other times behind thick trees. My spawning point changed randomly between cycles, so I had to adapt accordingly.

“Oh, not you again!” I ran into a familiar woman during the 8th cycle. She was the backstabber who shot me on the 2nd cycle. Apparently, she had been using the same camping strategy as me.

Huh, to think she dared to steal my hiding spot! I had to teach this wench who was the ultimate camper around here!

“Get out, bitch.”

BAM

Her body went limp and fell onto the ground. Her reaction was way too slow. To think that someone like her managed to eliminate me in the past. What a noob I was.

“Well, excuse me.” I sat down beside her motionless body and pressed my back against the rock. I had grown almost completely desensitized over the last couple of cycles. I won’t die even if I’m shot and others won’t die even if I shoot them. There was no reason to get worked up over any of this. It was really just a “game” in that sense.

Still, one thing occasionally freaked me out: the bodies of eliminated players vanished without a trace. I had been staring at the woman’s unconscious body for over 10 minutes and it didn’t even twitch. Yet, after I was distracted for a moment, the next time I checked... the body was gone.

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It felt like somebody’s sick joke, as the bodies only disappeared when I wasn’t looking at them. I had never managed to witness the process itself. Were they moved by somebody? Did they evaporate? I had no idea,

I had the urge to hold onto a body and close my eyes, to check whether it’ll disappear through my grip. But, I didn’t dare touching the bodies. They looked so lifeless. Too lifeless. It was questionable whether they were actually alive. If I learned the bodies turned cold or had no pulse... I won’t be able to keep going.

And so, the mystery of the vanishing bodies remained a mystery. I had no choice but to accept it as part of the “game”. Ignoring such disturbing matters, I continued to camp and camp and camp.

“So we meet again.” I ran into the camping woman again on the 14th cycle. There weren’t many good hiding spots around, so it wasn’t strange for two campers to run into each other.

BAM

The result was the same as last time. Seriously, she sucked at this game. She had no right to call herself a full-fledged camper. Unlike her, I was the real deal.

BAM

“Ugh...” I fell victim to a surprise attack a few seconds later. The path of a camper was ridden with many hardships. Staying true to that path, I kept repeating the same routine each cycle:

Seek a hideout. Wait. Shoot an intruder. Wait. Shoot an intruder. Wait. Get shot by an intruder.

I had run into the pesky camper woman a few more times, but she never gave me a real fight. I almost felt bad for repeatedly eliminating her. Almost.

“... just what cycle is it anyway?” I had lost count after 23. Needless to say, I hadn’t had much success with this camping strategy. No matter how much I polished my camping skills, it was never enough.

After being eliminated so many times, the strategy started losing its appeal. No matter for how long I had managed to stay hidden, somebody always took me out in the end. Camping also demanded me to stay on guard 24/7, to always anticipate incoming enemies. I couldn’t tell who was coming or where they’ll pop up from. It was stressing as hell.

Staying holed up also resulted in a severe lack of information. I didn’t know how many enemies were left, where they were or how strong they were. I knew nothing.

On top of all that, there was another unpleasant aspect: the sea. Over the course of the game, the sea gradually invaded farther and farther into the land. I suspected this place was a sinking island.

Many of the best hiding spots were close to the shore, which meant they were the first to sink. Even when I was lucky and survived for a very long time, the invading sea drove me out of my hideout. Of course, that immediately resulted in being shot by enemies who anticipated this very development.

Interestingly, same as the players, the sea was also “reset” each cycle. Even after the sea invaded far into the land, on the next cycle it returned back to the shore. Either the whole area was reset to its original state each time, or we had been transported to a a new, yet similar, area each cycle.

As an experiment, I picked stones from the shore and carved my name on rocks and trees. However, I had never found these carvings in future cycles. Did the whole area really change each cycle? Yet another mystery I couldn’t solve.

BAM

As I was eliminated for the millionth time, I had no choice but to draw my final conclusion: my strategy sucked! I quit camping!