Chapter 444 - The Harder They Fall

Shadowshot carefully lined up a shot on a target so far away, the viewers of Saint’s stream couldn’t even see them from the third person camera. The sniper was dead silent, and maneuvered his heavy anti-material rifle with subtle adjustments on a target only he could see.

From his position on top of the tallest tower in Drastov City, he had an almost perfect line of sight over the parts of the map still protected by the Node. Shadowshot made one last, small adjustment and then pulled the trigger.

Whumph!

Fire exploded out of the muzzle, and a large bullet lanced through the air. Before it could even hit its target, the sniper stood up and moved around the roof of the building to check out other sightlines. It was only eight seconds later that a notification finally popped up.

[Shadowshot > BrokenMoon]

”Damn, just how far was that shot?” Saint flicked the camera, and it zoomed across the massive snowfield in between POIs. After a few minutes, he managed to find what was left of BrokenMoon. The guy hadn’t even had a chance being sniped from so far away.

| ShadoWalk: Shadowshot is the sniper king!

| Cyberpunk_Blue: He makes for boring content though.

| DistinguishedGentleman: He’s definitely got this in the bag.

| Nightfall: @admin Nightshade! @admin Nightshade!

“You want to see Nightshade, huh?” Saint laughed, and checked his side monitor. The girl was almost on the other side of the city by now. “I have a feeling we’re about to see a lot of her.”

| Nightfall: What do you mean?

”Well… you’ll see.” Saint eyed the central building in the middle of the city. There were now thirty mercs inside of it vying for locations. Everyone was convinced the tower would be the final circle. No one was committing, so the death count was incredibly low. For now.

The bigger issue than that, though, was that everyone was starting to bunker. DNBR’s had a bad habit of being extraordinarily boring just before the end of the game. Everyone wanted to win, so it all slowed down until the collapsing Node forced fights. It was a well known fact that the first to push was usually the first to die.

Over the years, the strategy had adapted to this slow down. Now everyone that came to a DNBR had the same ending plan—find a spot, bunker down, set up dozens of ICE programs as defense, and wait. If they were lucky, the Node would collapse toward them and they’d have the advantage. If they weren’t…

While everyone tried to get into position, the show was still entertaining, but like now? Where everyone was already starting to bunker? The game slowed down so much that even his viewer count had dropped. It was a good thing that there was a game changer like Shiro in place.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t still fights. Just that most of them were peek out, fire, and duck back into cover to drain their opponents supplies. Gunfire erupted almost constantly from inside though—

[Nightshade > Frontfacenemy]

Saint blinked, and checked on Shiro. She was still moving away from the tower so how had she done that… A trap? He moved back through the footage, and popped up a recording onto his stream.

A woman tactically entered a building by climbing the outside wall, and breaking in through a window. She slunk through an apartment, and poked a suppressed DMR out the door. The moment she appeared, a Merc program turned to open fire—only to be shot in the side of the head with deadly precision.

The woman gunned down three more Merc programs before making it to the stairs. She took one step too many, and her foot skimmed a laser. In an instant, hundreds of metal balls eviscerated her before she could even hope to back away to safety.

“Well, that’s certainly one way to take care of an opponent.” Saint zoomed out to a macro view of the city. “Outside of a few stragglers, everyone’s here. Ladies and gents, this one won’t be like the other DNBRs, I can tell you that much—“

As if to punctuate his words, explosions lit up the tower that over half the mercs were using as cover. Purple voids exploded outward across the base of the building as dozens of support columns were destroyed all at the same time. Concrete and metal groaned eerily through the building.

Tremors struck the tower one by one. The entire building groaned fiercely under the feet of the Operators who thought they were being smart by entering it. The world tilted and shook for those inside, and the ear-piercing screech of metal and concrete filled the air.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The entire tower lurched sharply as more supports gave out thanks to the failing structure. Saint’s eyes twitched as he watched the entire building lurch, and start to tilt out toward the city. He’d seen controlled demolitions before, ‘course. Usually, they were set up so the collapsing building did no damage to their surroundings.

This demolition wasn’t controlled. Shiro had rigged the entire building to collapse so that it’d cause the maximum amount of devastation across the entire city. As the tower tilted more and more with dozens of Operators trapped inside, his chat exploded.

| ShadoWalk: Who’s crazy enough to do something like this?!

| DistinguishedGentelman: Talk about a game changer

| Cyberpunk_Blue: This is crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy.

| 2077Historian: Someone’s about to rip kill leader out of Shadowshot’s hands.

| ShadoWalk: Shadowshot! He’ll make it out of this, right?!

Saint shifted the perspective to follow the sniper favored to win. The camera snapped to him just as he tried to take off with the Icarus wings. Every crack and shudder threw him off, making him lose his balance and plummet down alongside the building. Just because he had good tech didn’t mean he was an expert in using it.

“Agh!” A chunk of rebar twisted concrete slammed into him from behind. It sent him careening into a wall with a shattered wing. He plummeted through an open window, and disappeared into the falling building.

Shadowshot was just one of dozens of people trapped inside the building as it collapsed downward. He could even be considered to be one of the few lucky ones. The gravitic in his wings, if nothing else, would keep him from taking a fatal fall. ‘Course, that was assuming he wasn’t crushed in the process.

Boom!

The tower hit the ground with a concussive clap of noise. Quakes rocked the entire city, and tremors rolled through the snow layer covering the streets. The pure white sheets were instantly polluted with devastation, and cracks surged out along the snow paths.

As it started to snow concrete powder across the city, several buildings in the path of the tower were likewise brought down. It was like the entire city was collapsing all thanks to a few well placed explosives. If this could be done here… what would this kind of thing do in an actual city in the real world? The thought sent a chill down his spine.

Concrete pieces raised down from above, and mixed into a cloud of debris that was launched into the air. Sightlines were totally obscured around the tower as everything in it was tossed around like the world’s worst salad. Furniture, walls, and even people were slammed around without any control.

“There she goes,” Saint muttered under his breath as he watched the tower fully collapse. Watching it triggered something in his memory of the AEZ and the Crusade’s idiotic plan to blow up half of East End.

The kill feed flew as more and more people were either crushed to death or fell to their death. The kills were attributed to Nightshade, and instantly sent her to the top of the kill ladder. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he should be happy or freaked out that his friend was such an efficient killer.

— — —

Woah, wicked. I watched the building fall down to the snow covered streets with a wide grin on my face. I thought it’d be cool, but I didn’t think it’d be quite so effective. It being cool was reason enough for me to commit in the first place.

I leaned against a wall inside of an alley, and watched my points spike. The ground below me was still shaking with aftershocks of the collapse. That wasn’t even mentioning the massive cloud shot up into the sky. Dust and snow mixed to create a micro storm around the tower despite someone still controlling the weather.

Watching the building collapse across the city brought flashbacks of the time I first met Brunhilde. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough to make my heart throb uncomfortably. It was much, much better not being in the tower when it collapsed. My demo work had been perfect, too, so the building collapsed onto the complete other side of the city from me.

“Now what, Shiro? Activate the plan?” Luna asked. We had more than enough points to go through with our original plan by now.

”No.” I pushed off from the brick wall, and thought through the layout of the city. “You still have a connection with that spider tank?”

”Yeah?” My map lit up with a ping off to the side of the collapsed tower. “What about it?”

”Send it to the tower… spider tanks were originally search and rescue units, so it should feel right at home there.” A vicious smirk crossed my face. “Have it kill whoever it finds.”

There should be plenty of helpless Operators trapped in the debris. This was quite literally the perfect circumstances for the spider tank to get a move on. If anyone survived the initial collapse, it’d make sure none of them were left by the time the Node closed.

”Actually, can we get more of them?” If I could get more to speed up the searching process, I could kill even more of the others before they stabilized.

”They’re twenty points each.” Luna crushed my dreams of having a hunter killer army. Still, that wasn’t so bad.

I eyed my points. A twenty point hit wouldn’t be too crushing given the current situation. ‘Sides, it’d pay itself off with just seven kills. “Make one.”

”Roger.” The moment the order was given, pixels surged up all around me. Slowly but surely, a framework of a massive spider appeared in the air. The pixels mixed with code and condensed across the framework of the spider tank, slowly filling it out.

In less than a minute, a new spider tank joined my own personal army. I snapped a salute to the departing bot. “Good luck, soldier!”

”You know they’re not real, right.” Luna just sighed as the spider tank walked off towards the city. Every heavy step and whirl of its servos was another step toward victory.

”Chek chek.” I knew that, ‘course. I also knew that Luna was the one controlling them instead of letting the program act on its own. It was clear from the blue eyes of the spider tank. “Good hunting, Lulu.”

”What did I say about that nickname?” She asked, and sounded incredibly tired. Was it ‘cause of me? No, definitely not me.

“Fine, fine, Nana, have it your way.” I snicked and pushed off from the side of the alley. That was one powerplay done. I had one more plan that was bound to be more lethal. Before that, though, there was a man I’d been meaning to kill for the entirety of this game. “Set course for Red Furry!”

”Yeah, whatever.” A ping popped up on my HUD. He was lucky enough not to be in the strike zone of the collapsing building. “He’s over there.”

“Thanks!” I left the alley behind.Whoever had control of the weather seemed to finally let it slip. As I set off for my next target, a fierce snowstorm swallowed the city around me.