According to the map… Amber should be just up ahead.

But… I'm not sure if I want to go there…

"Ahhhh!!! That guy is crazy!!"

"Who the fuck is that?!"

"Waaahhh!! Let me go!! I surrender already!!"

Several gunshots rang out and then it was silent for a moment.

Then more screams came a few seconds later.

"She found us!! Run!!!"

"Ahhhh!! I want my mommy!!!"

"No, stop, please!! Why are you tormenting us like this?! No! I-- Accckk!!"

What the heck is going on over there?

I checked the map, seeing the dot on the map a few feet away from me just past the door. I then shifted my gaze up to look at the door in question before looking down at the map again.

Yeah… She's inside there… I think… Unless she's upstairs or downstairs instead?

I turned to look at my two companions who gave me a nod in return.

Alright, just in case the person in that room was someone else, we would be ready to face them.

Ries took point and also activated the shield on her minigun before activating the door to open it.

The door slowly slid open and I peeked over Ries's shoulder to see someone currently smashing someone's head against the wall repeatedly.

They weren't even saying anything as they were smashing the guy against the wall. They were literally smashing the guy silently without saying anything.

Err… I think that's Amber, right?

I noticed that someone was crawling away from them and it looked like he was trying to reach for a gun that had been discarded at the side.

He managed to grab it to turn around to shoot at Amber but she had tossed the guy she had been smashing the head at him, causing him to shoot the guy instead.

Those shots finished the guy off and Amber made use of her impromptu shield to rush towards that guy and deliver a kick across his face.

She then lifted her foot to stomp on his head repeatedly and by the sounds of muffled cries coming from that guy, it seems like it at least still hurts him even though we're in a simulation.

I wasn't even sure if physical attacks like that even do damage but apparently it did since the guy eventually disappeared into particles.

That also happened to be the last guy in the room so she slowly turned her head to stare at us.

At first it looked like she was going to attack us too until I felt her gaze landed on me.

The tension suddenly disappeared and she rushed towards us with her hands outstretched.

"Teraaaaaa!!!! I missed youuuuuu!!!"

Ries had to step out of the way, allowing Amber to reach me and pull me into a tight hug.

"Oof… We were separated for not even more than an hour, weren't we?" I asked.

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"Nnngghhh… It felt longer because I didn't know whether you were ok or not!"

I gestured at my wrist, "There's a map function here that shows your teammates."

I even raised my arm to show her the map in question.

She looked at it before turning to me, "Wooow! I didn't even realise we could do that! That is so cool! If only I knew about this earlier, I could have searched for you with it!"

I looked around the room, "Well… Err… It looks like you had fun though?"

She scoffed, "Fun? It most definitely wasn't fun! I was worried that some random people might be bullying you!"

I raised an eyebrow behind my mask, "I'm pretty sure I've shown you that I can handle myself in a fight, haven't I?"

She hugged me tighter, "And I think you already know I'm quite a possessive person, yes? Ehehehe~"

You don't say… At least she admits to it I guess?

Lea cleared her throat, "Ahem… Captain? May I remind you that we are not exactly in a safe location?"

Ah, right.

I separated myself from Amber and took a moment to check our surroundings.

It seems like this was supposed to be a locker room of sorts so it was basically an enclosed room.

Perhaps one or two teams thought that it was a good idea for them to hide inside here and wait out the circle until Amber found them, which resulted in the massacre we heard outside.

That worked for us because now we had a relatively secure place that we could use to check our equipment since we hadn't had a chance to do that since meeting up with Ries.

I positioned myself so that my drone could watch the door while I gathered the other girls together to check on our equipment.

"What skill cards and weapons do you have?" I asked Amber.

"Weapons? Oh. I don't have any. And what's a skill card?"

I blinked at her, "You… Don't have any weapons? How did you even last for this long?"

She shrugged, "I just beat them up?"

I noticed that she didn't even have a shield…

"Were you sneaking around or something?"

"Eh? Sneaking? Of course not. I was trying to find you so I kept going to where there were fights to see if you were there. When I knew you weren't, I just beat everyone up."

"Err… You didn't even bother to pick up the weapons they dropped?"

She shook her head, "Of course not, that would just waste my time when I could be searching for you!"

I don't even know what to say to that…

"Ok… I guess we're fortunate that we eliminated some of them here and you can just take the equipment they dropped then."

Amber looked around, "Hmm… I guess I'll just take a look around and take anything that looks good then."

Lea also nodded, "In that case, allow me to do the same as well, Captain."

"Sure. We should take a look around and see if there's any good stuff around here especially since we would be pretty much fighting against the final groups after this. Ries, can I count on you to watch the door?"

Ries giggled and hefted her minigun, "Leave it to me, Boss!!"

She stomped over to the door we entered and had her minigun trained on the doorway, almost as though she was hoping someone would actually walk through that so she could have a reason to shoot.

Lea, Amber and I split up to look around the locker room to see if there were any good equipment laying around.

I figured that Amber would like to use pistols so I picked up any pistols I found and brought them back to the centre of the room to drop them there in case she wanted any.

I also found some skill cards where some looked to be useful while some were just outright useless.

There was one skill card where the skill was literally making you explode when activated.

… Ok yeah, I can see how it can be used where you send one of your teammates to act as a suicide bomber or something but this is useless for my team because I'm not going to make anyone do that.

Sure, it could be a last resort skill as well where you are engaged in a close combat fight with some enemy and you were losing so you blow yourself up with them…

Ok, not totally useless, I stand corrected.

But I mean when you put this next to a skill that literally allows you to call down an airstrike at your target location, which one do you think would be more useful?!

I'm not even kidding about the airstrike one because that's what I found. The only downside to it was the fact that it was a single use only.

There was also another skill card that allowed you to spawn in a crate filled with shield and health boosters every few minutes so that's definitely useful.

Then you have the less useful ones like this skill card that lets you feel the actual pain of being shot.

Yes, the simulator numbs the pain that you could feel in here and this skill basically lets you feel all the pain you would have felt as if you were shot in real life. I legitimately cannot think of an actual, practical use of this in this competition unless you are an absolute masochist.

There were a few other skill cards as well and it definitely seems like I was right in thinking that the good stuff would naturally be gathered in the final circles since the players would be gathering here anyway.

I brought everything that was worth looting back to the others and gathered them in a pile to let everyone choose whichever equipment suited them best for the upcoming battle.

The circle was already pretty small so any survivors still in the game would be gathered in this stadium and it would only just be a constant battle from now on as soon as we stepped out of here.

No matter what, since we've already come this far, we have to win this!