We were nearing the city area and I could already hear gunshots and explosions from here. Seems like it's pretty intense over there…

I looked down at my map and there's one of our teammates just up ahead in what I could only describe as a shopping mall.

And I'm not sure if we're fortunate or not but that's also where the most explosions are coming from… Whoever that's in there seemed to be in the thick of it too.

"I'll go in and try to find them. In the meantime, could I ask you to set up an overwatch somewhere?" I asked.

Lea looked around before pointing at an office building a short distance away, "I'll be there, Captain."

I raised an eyebrow at her, "Wouldn't that be a little far to provide any support?"

"Do not worry Captain. It is not."

I trusted her so I nodded, prompting her to make a run towards the building while I turned to face the mall.

Hefting my rifle and double checking that I was at full health and my guns were all loaded, I started running towards the mall as well.

I figured that going through the front entrance was probably a bad idea so I made use of my grappling hook to pull myself onto the roof to look for a roof access point.

As I climbed over the ledge, I found someone else laying down prone on the roof with his back towards me.

I froze, thinking that he might have set a trap for me but then realised he had a holographic screen in front of him where he seemed to be controlling something through it.

I very carefully climbed over the ledge and checked for traps before creeping towards him.

While he was still distracted by the monitor, I used my free hand to pull out my pistol while keeping my rifle by my side in case any surprises came up.

It seemed like my concern was unnecessary as I managed to reach him without the guy even realising someone was sneaking up on him.

Just as I was about to creep closer, however, the roof access door at the end suddenly burst open which made me jump.

I didn't even see who it was before an explosion engulfed him, with a kill message that showed someone died to a bomb.

I'm going to guess that this guy was the one who trapped the door since he was expecting people to come up to the roof via that door but he didn't expect someone to have a grappling hook that could bypass that.

Unfortunately, that jump earlier also gave away my location and he noticed me standing behind him almost immediately.

Fortunately though, he was lying down prone which meant he could not respond to my presence quickly enough so I emptied my pistol mag on him before he could get up.

I watched as he disappeared into particles, leaving behind a pistol, a rifle, two grenades and… Oh, a skill card!

It's probably what he was using when I found him earlier I guess?

I picked up the card and found a picture of what looked like a drone with a gun attached underneath it.

[Active Skill - Attack Drone: Allows user to summon an Eagle Class Assault Drone with a ballistic weapon attachment in either sentry mode or remote control mode. If destroyed, can be resummoned after a thirty second cooldown.]

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Yep, like I thought. He must have deployed it and plopped himself up here thinking that there would be minimal risk of him getting wiped if he just camped up here.

This is definitely useful so I took that card and slotted it onto my waist.

I then tried to summon it and a triangular shaped drone appeared in the air beside me. It wasn't using propellers to stay afloat but it did have a low thrum sound coming from the bottom so I suspect it was using some kind of hover technology or something.

At the very front was a barrel jutting out at the end of the triangle which I presumed must be where it will shoot from.

For now, I set it to sentry mode which would make it float along beside me and shoot at any enemies we might encounter.

I then picked up the two grenades before moving towards the door with my new 'companion', after I reloaded my pistol, of course.

The sound of gunshots and explosions got rather deafening as I reached the doorway, looking at the flight of stairs that led down to the interior of the mall itself.

I was just about to start my descent when the sound of hurried footsteps came from below as several people ascended the stairs.

I quickly took a step back before looking up at the roof of the bulkhead, figuring that I could hide up there when these guys come up onto the roof and ambush them from there.

I wasn't sure if the drone would just automatically fire on enemies so I made sure to lay myself low so that we were completely out of sight.

At least three people ran through the door and I realised that they were running away from something with how panicked they sounded.

"Who the fuck was that?!"

"This is so unfair! Why is that even allowed?!"

"Oh, I keep forgetting that you're new to this game… Those are absolutely allowed… I'm more surprised that they're using it so well…"

"You're telling me that we can find rocket launchers and miniguns here?!"

"Yes?"

"How is that fair?!"

"Well… That would slow you down quite immensely and in a competition like this, you wouldn't want to be weighed down especially if you're a solo."

"I still think having them is ridiculous! They're single handedly wiping out squads by themselves just because of that!"

"Hey… Let's hold up on the complaints for a bit… Where's G?"

There was a short pause and I figured that this 'G' guy might have been the person who got blown up by the trap earlier.

"Hey! G! Where are you?!"

I decided that this was the best time for me to spring my trap so I took out one of the grenades I had just picked up and… Err… How do you use this thing?

I mean… I knew it was a grenade since it's the same shape as the one I kicked away back when I met up with Lea but… It's not like there's a pin or something to pull?

Oh wait, it looks like there's a button over here that I need to first uncap to press it.

A red light started blinking on the grenade and I quickly rolled it away from me until it reached the edge and dropped down where those guys should be.

"Hey, what the--"

I braced myself as the grenade exploded below, shaking the ledge that I was on from the shockwave.

Once it was clear, I got back up on my feet and peeked over the edge with my rifle to see a dust cloud below.

Unbidden, the drone started firing into the cloud and I followed suit, shooting at the same place it was shooting at.

A kill message popped up on the edge of my vision and the drone quickly switched targets, prompting me to do the same as well.

Another kill message popped up just as the cloud cleared, revealing the last guy laying on the ground still dazed and confused from the grenade's explosion.

My drone started shooting at the last guy and this time I let it finish him off.

The poor guy barely managed to push himself up on an elbow before several bullets peppered his back and reduced his health down to zero.

I reloaded my weapon before jumping down from the ledge to aim my rifle at the stairs, just in case the explosion attracted more people to investigate.

Seeing no one, I started descending the stairs, following my map to where one of our teammates was.

Also, I noticed that Lea seemed to have made it to her building safely and seeing that the dot on the map wasn't moving, she must have already set up an overwatch.

The mall was a mess as gunshots, shouts and explosions were echoing off the walls. The mall only had a single story so I was moving from cover to cover as I headed to the dot on the map.

But then I realised that I was literally going to where the explosions and gunshots were the loudest.

Damn… Are they pinned down or something? Especially since the previous group was mentioning something about someone with a minigun…

I'm hoping that I don't run into whoever was using that as a weapon though…

"Nyahahahaha!!! Why are you running?!! Weren't you guys hunting me earlier?!! Die, die, dieeeeee!!!"

A rather familiar voice came from around the corner right before the whine of something spinning up could be heard.

Two guys ran out from the corner and tried to turn towards me, only for a literal hail of bullets to shred them apart from the side, eliminating the both of them in an instant.

That voice… Is that Ries?