The moment the game started, Max found himself randomly spawned on a roof, looking down over an open city square. It looked like everyone had started in the same general area, and he could see at least a quarter of the competitors from where he was standing.
A sense of danger came from behind him and Max twisted to the side, kicking the legs out from under his attacker and then breaking their neck, a standard Kep Maga attack combination taught in every military academy, but it caught his opponent off guard.
[First Kill of the match goes to SlumDogRaider]
The announcement startled everyone, making them think he spawned behind someone and ambushed them the moment they spawned in.
[Kill by Blood Goddess]
[Kill by Blood Goddess]
[Kill by Blood Goddess]
As Max suspected, Nico and her knife were on a rampage in the starting zone, so he hopped down from the roof and cast his Magic Arrow into the head of another player. His Targeting abilities activated the moment he started casting the spell, making it incredibly easy to get a critical hit on the other players while he recited the spell as fast as he could.
[Kill by SlumDogRaider]
[Kill by SlumDogRaider]
[Kill by Lord PockiPock]
[Kill by SlumDogRaider]
Things were looking up for Max now, and he was racking up the points in a hurry, gaining a head start on the others that would soon let him buy a more powerful spell.
But there were no targets other than players, and they had scattered now, realizing the danger of the starting formation.
In the auditorium, each seat had the option to pick an individual player's feed to follow, along with the Kill Cam and highlight reel that played on smaller screens. Those who paid the extra for the booth seats had virtual reality headsets for themselves, getting to watch from the same perspective as the players, or adding many additional screens so they didn't miss any of their favorite players' actions.
Thirty seconds after being killed, the first batch of assassinated players respawned at random somewhere near the starting zone, cursing their bad luck and noting with some relief that the game wouldn't bring you below your starting values and that you didn't lose gear when you died.
Currently, Max and Nico were the main topics of interest for the spectators in the arena. Max's rapid casting abilities were beyond anything that the observers could understand. When most of the casting classes wanted to use a spell they activated the tooltip and then spoke the complex keyword. Max was the only one that had realized so far that the only had to accurately pronounce it in his thoughts and not actually speak it out loud.
Nico was simply being Nico. Right at the beginning of the match, she had slit the throats of two players who were still trying to get the hang of their character controls and then got caught by a Knight. She dodged his sword swing, but he kicked her knife away into the corner of the room. In retaliation, Nico jumped on him and bit his throat out using the Vampire fangs that she gave her character. The blood effect on the players faded after a few seconds, but that kill played half a dozen times on the highlight reel so far.
It was a bit of knowledge that a lot of players would have loved to have. There was no introduction, so they had to learn to use the skills of their character on their own unless they wanted to just flail around with their weapons doing base damage. They didn't know that you didn't need to use a weapon, or that all the base damages were realistic, so at the start of the match, before everyone was powered up, you could just beat your opponents to death and not use skills at all.
The lack of knowledge was the big selling point of the tournament, and the reason so many players had come from other planets to give the game a try before it was publicly available.
Max had also learned about unarmed combat, having snapped a neck, and he was quickly modifying his plans for the match. Magic would be needed for the twelve-hour-long match, no doubt, but a backup weapon would be essential. Others wouldn't expect the mage to stab them, and the players' nameplates weren't visible to each other. Unless you recognized the character they picked or they identified themselves, who you were fighting was a mystery.
Max made his way through the woods carefully, using all the stealth techniques he had mastered to survive as a Special Tactics unit commander. In the first clearing he came to, there was a perfect opportunity for him. Five players were injured and fighting it out, throwing spells at each other with grand shouts.
There was a relatively straight branch about two meters long with a forked end laying on the ground and Max grabbed it, seeing a notification that it was a plain branch and the damage output. Then he tore a little cloth off his robe, thankful that items could be damaged in such a way, and tied a large rock to the end, using the fork in the branch to stabilize it. The Narsians loved the two-handed hammer for a very good reason, it inflicted an incredible amount of damage.
Max started to swing the weapon as he ran, gaining momentum while simultaneously casting magic arrows as fast as he could into the sorceress furthest away on his right. The witch closest to him turned just in time to catch a large rock to the face, creating a gruesome death scene that made the other players pause.
So far, they had killed each other with spells, they hadn't expected the bludgeoning deaths to be so realistic.
That was Max's win. His magic arrows took down two more injured spell casters, while the rock on his hammer took the last.
[Kill by SlumDogRaider]x5
[Bonus Points]
Max checked his points and found that he now had enough points to either upgrade Magic Arrow twice or to purchase fireball which would do area damage. Right now, few players had teamed up, so area damage was a low priority. He noticed that he could also increase his own stats, and improving his mana to allow more consecutive spell casts was tempting, but being able to single-hit kill low-powered players at full health was a better benefit, so the points went to Magic Arrow.
[Massacre by Blood Goddess] flashed across every player's interface and in the highlight reel of the arena, making everyone switch screens to watch the replay.
As a hundred thousand live viewers watched in awe, Nico snuck up on a house where a group of players was discussing an alliance to build their powers. Then she quietly barricaded all the doors and used a purchased torch and oil to burn the building to the ground with all ten of them trapped inside.
The burning building was a beacon to other players who wanted the advantage of killing a more powerful but injured player and getting a cut of their score. But Nico wasn't injured, she was hiding high up in the trees.
That was the best place to get points, so Max also headed towards the burning building, careful not to be noticed as he advanced. The description of the scoring system said that it gave higher rewards to more difficult and innovative kills, so he could definitely get some points near the fire if he tried.
