Ability Wielders

His livestream had millions of concurrent live viewers being one of the most famous Steel Storm player in the world and all. A few seconds later, he was brought into a game. Entering, he chose his Hunter character.

"Oh yeah…" Lawin said with excitement. When he sp.a.w.ned in the Ruined City, the standard 100-player battle royal map, he started moving his character finding for gun boxes. Simultaneously, he was conversing with his viewers. "You know guys? Steel Storm is one of those games that never gets old! There are limitless possibilities with these builds and combination of skills. It"s just a matter of experimenting, discovering and mastering them."

The Ruined City, as its name suggests, is a post-apocalyptic map of a city. There were three regions in the Ruined City, the Concrete Jungle, the Suburban Expanse, and the Outfields Carpet.

The Concrete Jungle was the central area of the Ruined City that featured towering crumbling buildings that had foliage growing all over them. The city is entirely fictional and handcrafted by the skilled graphical design team of Steel Storm, making for a unique site that closely mimicked that of what a city would look like tens of years after apocalypse.

The Suburban Expanse was the area surrounding the Concrete Jungle. The Suburban Expanse contained tens of wooden housing units that were corroding and rotting.

Further outward was the last area that encapsulated both the Concrete Jungle and the Suburban Expanse, the Outfields Carpet. The Outfields Carpet was mostly gra.s.sy fields, olden gas stations, trees, and others.

Currently, Lawin sp.a.w.ned in the Outfields Carpet. Turning his camera, he saw a Rogue enter his camera, moving unbelievably fast. In the Rogue"s hands was one of the semi-automatic Thunderclap sniper rifle.

Laughing, Lawin mocked the guy, "Look at that guy! A pure-speed probably gla.s.s cannon Rogue. That is so absurd that this person would try this!"

Many of his viewers laughed along with him as it was indeed pure suicide to create such a build. Even the best Rogue player in the world, the man with the username "Yato," the j.a.panese G.o.d of Calamity, wouldn"t attempt to use such a ridiculous build that emphasized mainly on speed.

Steel Storm, as Lawin articulated, was one of a kind in its genre. It has been made 10 years ago, yet it never got old due to its unique character customization system and tens of fun game modes.

In truth, its popularity only grew upwards as it became older, especially when the first Bullet h.e.l.l in 2050 was launched. The first Bullet h.e.l.l was one of the most successful events in e-sports compet.i.tion that garnered over 500 million viewers, and that was not including the people that attended on the venue of its home, Botswana.

Yes, Steel Storm is the pride of Botswana"s game company Solar Safari, and the brainchild of Silvia Dintwe, the president of Solar Safari. Bullet h.e.l.l was the largest ever gaming compet.i.tion held in Africa, forever etched in history.

And in the past 10 years, many have attempted stupid builds, i.e., the one in the distance of Lawin"s character walking fervently with ridiculous movement speed. However, no professional Steel Storm player has done such a stupid maneuver in a stream, or even a regular game without a stream, much less in a compet.i.tion. And even if they did so, they would have a reasonable purpose, such as goofing around with a friend.

"Let"s follow this…" Before Lawin could finish his sentence, he watched an astonishing scene that made the chat in Lawin"s stream and Lawin himself shut up. "What the h.e.l.l was that? This guy…"

What occurred was that the Rogue he was observing was moving in a direction away from him, and suddenly stop. A few seconds later, the Rogue jumped and shot towards his left, a notification of a death popped up on his screen, "BlackPeePee69 was killed by Spectral Scope with a Thunderclap."

Rubbing his eyes, it widened as he stared into the camera. "Guys, it"s a coincidence…"

That was when the Rogue, as if sensing Lawin, turned to his direction. As one of the top players in the world, Lawin moved his character away as fast as possible. Soon, a shot from a sniper rifle rang out, with Lawin reacting swiftly and side-stepping.

Unfortunately, he was still hit by the Rogue. What"s surprising with this was that the Rogue hit him in the head, whittling down his health by nearly 90%. Lawin was a confident person, which is why he merely put 40 points in his Physique, and with the -5 Physique of a Hunter, he had a measly 45 overall points in it, giving him 450 health.

Right now, he possessed 50 points of health! What"s worse is that this was within 10 minutes of the game! He has never been this surprised in his life. "What the h.e.l.l is that accuracy? He predicted my sidestep? Is he using an aimbot?"

Thinking that, Lawin continued running without stop away from the Rogue in a zigzag pattern. Another round resounded, with Lawin"s heart skipping a beat, using the second active skill that he picked, Blink, to the side to avoid this bullet.

When his character emerged, he immediately died from the extreme velocity bullet of the Thunderclap. With mouth agape, he stared at the screen in shock, a message above was written, "Spectral Scope killed you with Thunderclap."

The chat was rowdy from witnessing this spectacle themselves. What kind of G.o.dlike aim did that Spectral Scope have!? They were all spamming the usual chat of "GG" "What the h.e.l.l?" "That guy"s using aimbot!" "Lol, you got clapped!" and all that.

Without saying anything, Lawin recovered and clicked on the spectate b.u.t.ton. His camera was zoomed into the character of Spectral Scope. What transpired the next few minutes made Lawin and his stream chat speechless.

Clicking on what Spectral Scope"s equipped Secondary Pa.s.sive and Active Skills, Lawin and his stream was baffled. That alone stunned them already. They questioned what kind of a build was Phantom Hands, Accelerate, Infused Bullet, and Healing Grace was. It was a totally outrageous set that made the knowledgeable players in the stream nauseated.

It was unlucky that the system of Steel Storm didn"t allow the viewing of other people"s stat distribution. Nevertheless, the people can estimate that Spectral Scope"s build heavily focused on speed as Spectral Scope walked akin to a regular player"s running speed, and when he ran, it was nonsensically fast.

Subsequently, when he clicked out of that screen, Spectral Scope has taken one more life! His current score? Five kills! That meant that this Spectral Scope has killed two more before Lawin encountered him.

As if satisfied of the kills he got in the area, Lawin and his stream watched Spectral Scope go into the Suburban Expanse and harvesting three more lives. Furthermore, as this was all happening, Lawin has turned on the POV camera of Spectral Scope and watched what was happening.

Viewing Spectral Scope"s gameplay at his POV was too confounding. Lawin formed two hypotheses from this situation, either Spectral Scope was cheating with some unknown imperceptible third-party program, or he possessed unmatched mechanical skill!

Regardless, what was really impressive of Spectral Scope"s gameplay, or the aimbot"s power, was his ability to critical strike anybody. In fact, all of his shots were all critical strikes!

As you can infer, a critical strike in Steel Storm wasn"t based on the game of random chance. It was from either hitting the exact spot of a character"s heart or a headshot, that was the sole two ways to induce a critical strike.

To make it all worse, Spectral Scope found the Headhunter, the strongest sniper rifle due to it increasing the critical strike multiplier from 2.5 times to 3.5. Regardless, it was only the strongest sniper rifle in the hands of an expert as its base damage was 100, a mediocre damage that was at the level of the previous gun that Spectral Scope was using, the Thunderclap, and Thunderclap was one of the weaker sniper rifles.

As aforementioned, Headhunter was exclusively termed as the king of sniper rifles because of its 3.5 critical strike multiplier. The most liked sniper rifle in the game remained to be the Railgun Sniper that dealt 120 points of raw damage.

Moving on, Spectral Scope"s third kill in the Suburban Expanse was the most remarkable of all. With the Headhunter, Spectral Scope hid behind a wall to block out the shots of the minigun that the juggernaut was using, activating Infused Bullet in the process.

At the last second of the Infused Bullet"s charging time, Spectral Scope rolled out of his hiding place and took an aim. Abruptly, Spectral Scope"s crosshair shifted to the right and fired. It should have been a miss as the juggernaut used Blink where Spectral Scope fired the bullet, hitting the juggernaut squarely and precisely in the chest, nay, the heart, dealing 2,625 points of damage to the juggernaut! One must know that hitting the heart was a much harder feat than hitting the head as the Heart Critical Strike, or so it"s termed as, has a lower area for error.

It was a display of skill that possibly no third-party program can hope to replicate, disproving the most feasible hypothesis of Spectral Scope utilizing an undetected and unknown third-party program.

Of course, Lawin watched everything transpire in his stream. The stream chat forgot that they were in a stream with Lawin and cheered for Spectral Scope, saying things like "insane!" "is this guy a professional Steel Storm player?" "when has a G.o.d played Steel Storm?" and such.

The next few minutes remained a bombsh.e.l.l to the viewers including Lawin as this Spectral Scope dodged approximately every bullet that was in his path, and- in the process of dodging, returned a fire that killed his opponent instantly with a critical strike.

That usage of Accelerate was not a feat that any player can achieve. A human"s mind only has a limited capacity of performing a task, and even Lawin, one of the micromechanically gifted revered Rogue player in the world, was dizzy from the speed that Spectral Scope"s camera was moving.

Thereupon, this Spectral Scope used Infused Bullet two more times, all for juggernauts that he came across, and the Accelerate six times, with the Healing Grace remaining unused as Spectral Scope never took damage.

In the end, Spectral Scope killed a total of 25 people, a fourth of the player base of the 100-player battle royal, and that was all with a freaking critical strike, with a 100% accuracy. This Spectral Scope put all the players to shame, and that was when Yato is put into the mix!

"Who the h.e.l.l is this guy!?" Lawin shouted, with the stream sharing his fervent curiosity of this Spectral Scope"s ident.i.ty. Checking the world leaderboards, Lawin didn"t saw any Spectral Scope in it whatsoever. "He"s not in the leaderboards! What the h.e.l.l?"

He thought that this Spectral Scope would at least be in the top ten of world leaderboards of ranked play as he was simply too good! Collapsing to his chair, Lawin released a sigh and said, "Chat, you know, when I said you were in for a ride, I did not expect for that guy to appear… This is unbelievable!"

An hour pa.s.sed, Lawin removed his mind on this Spectral Scope and chose to play other game modes to revive the livestream and remove the attention from Spectral Scope. He even brought out a goofy Spy gameplay for the first time to draw out the focus of his viewers from this unidentified Spectral Scope.

When he finished the stream, he lapsed back into his chair, sighing deeply. "What the h.e.l.l is with that Spectral Scope? I"m sure people would report him, howbeit… His gameplays are too fluid and excellent, not at all robotic… We can rule out the possibility of an aimbot, if so, what the h.e.l.l? Is that guy human?"

…..

Meanwhile, Mindanao. The Kamay ng Lagim underground headquarters were lively once again. It has barely been three weeks since they fully conquered the Indonesian Crimson Cloud, yet, they were moving already.

The four armies remained neatly lined up, their ranks replenished without any sign of the loss of soldiers during the conquest for Crimson Cloud. On one of the cohort of Blood King was a young 17-ish lady with short black hair and a beautiful angular face that can be compared to those of celebrities.

If one gazed deep into her blue eyes, they would see that it contained immense pain and suffering and would feel the intense wrath hidden within.

"All of you are gathered here for the second time around." Black Devil at the stage spoke with a regal air surrounding him. "Our conquest for Indonesia has been a lucrative success, our reign shall stay forever!"

Pausing for a second, eyeing the faces of the wielders in the crowd, Black Devil continued. "Now, right at this instance, we have the chance to take back what"s rightfully ours and hit our enemy where it hurts!"

Saying that, everyone in the crowd went wild, with the sole exception of the blue-eyed woman. On the contrary her face steeled further when she heard this, appearing to be holding back her fury.

"Tomorrow night at 6:00 PM, the night when the Walong Sinag ng Araw are all in Luzon, we will invade their HQ in Zamboanga City. Now, I will not bore all of you with the details, all you have to do is to free havoc within the HQ when I teleport all of you." Black Devil spoke with great enthusiasm in his tone, charisma oozing out of his body. "Let"s give them h.e.l.l!"

All the people within the room bellowed with fervor. At the end of the day, they"re all psychopaths that either had ma.s.sive bloodl.u.s.t, or wanted to kill people for the sake of enjoyment. Well, if they were regular people, they can be easily apprehended, but they"re not! All of them were specially trained elites that were specifically trained by the Limang Daliri of Kamay ng Lagim, apart from for the newly drafted ones succeeding the battle in Indonesia.

"Okay, you may rest. Conserve your energy for tomorrow." Black Devil verbalized after a few seconds of the frenzied cheers of his army.

On that note, all of the army turned around, with Black Devil snapping using both of his fingers as four portals appeared. The army marched into the portals, leaving behind the Limang Daliri.

"Heh, it"s a pity that I won"t see the expression of that b.i.t.c.h, Rose." Black Devil went down from the stage. "You guys also prepare for tomorrow. We release the beast at 6:00 PM and invade the base at its weakest. Of course, it"s not as simple as it sounds."

"Are you sure this will work?" The youngest, Blood King, interjected. "I mean, the Walong Sinag ng Araw are all gathered in Luzon, yes, but, shouldn"t it be because they"re gathered in Luzon that we shouldn"t attack?"

"That"s where you"re wrong." Black Devil shook his head. "You see, Blood King, Daniel is a vital part of the younger generation of Puting Araw, one of the hopes for the future that should be nurtured… One might say that Daniel has superior value than that wretched Hayden."

"And so?" Blood King asked. His face was twitching for the reason that he wasn"t informed of this plan at all. In fact, three of them weren"t informed, just Crimson Enchantress and Black Devil have full knowledge of this plan.

"Okay…" Black Devil coughed to clear his throat. "I"m now going to explain to you the entirety of this plan."

Then that"s what Black Devil did. When he finished explaining this plan, Graybeard and Earthquake nodded their heads, whilst Blood King had an envisaging countenance. Black Devil expressed his delight, "Isn"t this plan lovely?"

...

The main base of the Kamay ng Lagim had a similar structure to that of the Underworld Cities, albeit, with less sophisticated stone beams and tinier in comparison. Regardless, it continues, to this day, a powerful hidden underground citadel armed with the powerful army of Kamay ng Lagim.

One must know that only the best of the best of the psychos are able to reside in these dwellings, with the treatment here top-notch as there were countless slaves serving the members of the army.

"I need to inform him." The short-haired woman spoke in a different language that sounded like Filipino, yet not. Hurriedly, she attempted to go to where her dwelling was when she was blocked by a tall blonde man. Switching her language to Filipino, she said, "Get out of my way if you don"t want to die."

"Woah, easy there, pretty girl," the man said. Two people emerged behind his back, one that had a bulky muscular build, and one that had a black skin color and lanky. "Where are you going at this time of the day? Didn"t you hear of Black Devil"s order? We have a big day tomorrow, go back to your room, Annie."

"Can"t you see that"s where I"m going?" The woman named Annie articulated with gritted teeth, her tone full of impatience. "Get out of my way."

"Then, no. I forgot that we still have to go to have an a.s.sembly." The man smiled arrogantly, changing his words without shame. "Shall we go, pretty lady?"

Afterwards, the two others shifted to surround her. The bulky one"s skin turned gray similar to stone, on the lanky one"s hands appeared flamberge swords, and the blonde transformed into what appeared to be a half-man half-eagle hybrid.

Rolling her eyes, her arms bulked up and before the man with the stone-colored skin could move, Annie"s fist shot out with immense force towards him. Left with no time to react, the stone-skinned man"s stomach was. .h.i.t, sending him flying out, crashing to the wall.

The next second, Annie ducked two blades and, reaching for the flamberge blades with her hands, she crushed it. Simultaneously, she kneed the man"s b.a.l.l.s, causing the man to lie down on the ground, hand in b.a.l.l.s.

Then, she shifted her position and did a back kick towards the half-man half-eagle hybrid, who was frozen. The man was. .h.i.t in the head as he was in a dazed state from seeing his allies being pummeled.

"Hey, hey, what is this?" Precipitously, a man"s voice rang out as the half-man half-eagle hybrid"s head slammed to the ground. Looking for the source of the voice, Annie"s eyes went wide because Blood King was there! "Hey, we have a mission tomorrow and you"re here beating them up? Care to explain?"

"Sir Blood King!" Annie saluted, hiding her wrath. "These three men frivolously ganged up on me, preventing me from heading to my quarters and resting. They surrounded me and was definitely planning to do something, I simply defended myself."

"Mhm," Blood King touched his chin. "I guess that"s the only explanation here, huh? Well, you may go. These three will be punished."

Heaving a sigh of relief, Annie scuttled away as fast as she can. When she left, Blood King muttered, "A survivor, huh? Let"s see what she"s going to do."

…..

Random World Lore, Category – Gaming: 3DMM Ex, or the Three Dimensional Movement Machine Ex, is an improvement on the previous 3DMM of Pharaoh"s Mind. The difference with the former version and this new one is that the information transferal system of the trademarked and patented body-positioning sensor suit has no delay at all with the game, literally nothing, allowing for faster and more natural movements. In addition, the body-positioning sensor suit is water proof and can actually emulate sensory information. For example, if somebody wears the suit and, in-game, they step in water, their body would feel wet, if they are shot, they would feel pain, albeit, lower than an actual gun wound pain unless you turn it up to simulate true pain, etc. Unfortunately, the one flaw of all versions of 3DMM is that there"s no way that it can simulate underwater situations, a one, yet fatal, flaw, needing a controller to move the character when underwater. This was the one flaw that cannot be fixed with the 3DMM Ex as the high power usage was circ.u.mvented after a major design change, and the price has been reduced, though it is still pretty luxurious considering that it costs 500,000 credits.

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