Errr… That laughter could only belong to Ries, right?

Unless there's another catgirl who decided to participate in this fight?

Just in case… I'll deactivate my drone first in the event it gives away my current position for now.

I peeked around the corner to see a person wielding a minigun currently moving towards some guy who was trying to desperately crawl away from them.

"Nyahahaha!! Where are you trying to run off to?! Didn't you want to fight?! Then come and fight me!"

The person with the minigun stepped on the guy's back and lowered her weapon to point at his head, not even giving him a chance to cry out before the gun revved up and unleashed a hail of bullets into the back of his head.

"Nyahahahaha!! I can't believe they added the XM-Seven Energy Minigun here!! They even got the weight, fire rate, recoil and dimensions exactly right!! This is the best!!"

…

Yep, that's definitely Ries….

But… What's with that sudden change in personality?

As I was wondering if she was like this because of the fact that it's a game, someone peeked out from the corner and shot at Ries.

Ries reacted immediately by ducking her head to avoid the shots while swinging her minigun to spray in the direction of her shooter.

The newcomer ducked back behind the corner to avoid the rain of bullets which prompted someone from the opposite corner to pop out to start shooting at Ries instead.

I was just about to rush out to help her when she activated something which prompted a translucent energy shield to be projected from her minigun, protecting her from the bullets.

The other guy clearly did not expect that as he was late in going back behind cover and ended up being shredded into pieces by Ries's minigun, the cat girl laughing maniacally as she watched the guy disappear into particles.

"Nyahahaha!! Did you think you could just take me out that easily?! Time to fucking dieeeee!!"

She switched out her minigun and pulled out a new gun that had a long, single tube which she aimed at the corner the first guy had appeared from.

She then shot out a ball at the corner and I realised that it was a grenade launcher.

She really likes big guns as I expected…

The grenade exploded, blasting the guy out from the corner.

He didn't even manage to get up before Ries spun up her minigun again and blasted him to pieces.

"Nyahahaha! You can't hide from me!! Is there no one else?!"

As though responding to her provocation, a figure suddenly appeared from behind her out of thin air with a sword made of energy poised to stab her from behind.

I reacted quickly by raising my own rifle to fire at the back of the guy to save her.

Surprisingly, the guy did not even have a shield and two shots in the head from me was enough to wipe him.

Ries spun around and saw me and I thought she would mistake me for an enemy seeing that I had my gun pointed in her direction and the guy I was shooting at had already disappeared into particles.

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Surprisingly she lowered her gun and waved at me, "Hey boss! Glad to see you're ok! Look what I found!"

I'm… Not even going to question how she knew and just accept it as it is.

"We should go, this place is too open for us to fight safely."

She tilted her head, "Eh? Really? I think this place is fine though? There's little cover up close so we can see them coming and shoot them before they get close to us."

I pointed at the place where I just killed the guy who tried to stab her in the back, "That guy managed to sneak up on you. If I didn't shoot him, he would have stabbed you."

She showed me a peace sign, "That's why Boss is here to cover my back-- Boss!!"

She raised her gun to point in my direction and I instinctively knew that she was warning me about someone behind me.

I spun around while raising my gun at the same time, prepared to shoot whoever was behind me.

But instead of some guy trying to backstab me, all I saw was the particles of someone being eliminated.

Looking at the kill feed above, I saw Lea's name popping up with a kill.

I looked around and realised there was a skylight above on the roof that had a direct line of sight to the building that Lea had set herself up in.

I gave a thumbs up in that direction as a thanks to the Alv before turning back to Ries.

"Ahem… As I was saying, we should go. We're still missing Amber and it's better for us to stick together instead of being alone lest we get picked off one by one."

"Nyahahaha! That means we can get into bigger fights as well, right Boss? Then let's go!"

"Hold on, cover me for a bit," I told her, moving to the place where I killed the guy trying to backstab Ries earlier.

He had dropped his sword and, as I thought, a Skill Card as well.

[Active Skill - Active Camo: Allows user to turn themselves nearly invisible for five seconds. Using any weapon would break the camouflage. Cooldown time: thirty seconds.]

Hmm… This seems quite limited in use but I'll just take it along just in case. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I would very much like to take a moment to check Ries's equipment but this wasn't the safest place to do it so I quickly grabbed the Skill Card and the sword he dropped before leading the way towards Lea's location.

I ran a few steps before hearing Ries call out to me from behind, "Boss?"

Skidding to a stop, I turned around to see that Ries barely took a few steps from where she had been.

I was about to ask what was wrong when she took another slow step forward, pausing for a second before moving another step forward.

"That minigun slows you down by that much?" I asked.

She nodded, "If this was real life, I wouldn't even be able to lift this without using a power armour or an anti-grav support module…"

I watched her take another slow step forward and, if I'm being honest, that looks like a really huge drawback to have.

I can see why people wouldn't use such a weapon despite the immense firepower it could provide. Although I guess if you only needed to defend a single position, this would be an extremely valuable weapon instead.

Judging by the speed she was walking, the circle would start to close by the time we even reached the building and the map showed that it was outside the next circle as well…

No choice then…

I waved at the building where I believed Lea would be able to see me before pointing at my wrist and gesturing in the direction of the next circle.

Hopefully, she understood that we should move to the next area instead of staying here.

I turned back to Ries, "We'll need to move to the next area then. The good thing is that Amber seems to be making her way towards that location as well so it would work as a good rendezvous. But we would be quite vulnerable while we're moving there, think you can handle it?"

Ries hefted her minigun, "With something like this in my hands, I'm ready to take on anything, Boss! Nyahahaha! Like these guys over there!"

She spun around and activated the minigun's shield, blocking a shot from a pistol that was aimed at me from behind her.

The guy who had tried to sneak an attack on me tried to duck behind cover but he was just a little too late as Ries lit him up mercilessly.

Three others immediately popped out from behind their own hiding spots and started shooting as well, all of their shots being blocked by the shield on Ries's minigun.

She wasn't too surprised by the sudden appearance of the new enemies and calmly shifted her aim to shred another guy into pieces.

I have a feeling that shield also has a limit to how much damage it could take so I rushed in to help her take out the rest.

I used my grappling hook to launch myself upwards before using the momentum to swing towards one of them hiding behind an overturned table.

I caught him in the middle of a reload as he looked up at me in surprise, my foot meeting his face as I landed right on top of him and kicking him into the ground.

Without letting him recover, I fired my rifle into his chest, shattering his shield and eliminating him quickly.

I raised my rifle, preparing to shoot the final guy when he was shot through the head by a sniper round, his health dropping to zero and disappearing.

Thanks Lea.

Now we should really go before more people show up.