Apocalypse Hunter

Zin spotted people with lights climbing up the walls. Judging by their outfits made up of crappy leather clothing, Zin was able to figure out that they were Reavers.

Zin hid himself behind some reeds in the open field and watched them. He was about a third of a mile away from their position. They weren’t able to see Zin because it was dark.

I need to get to higher ground.

Instead of getting closer to Ard Point, Zin retreated to the nearby hills and climbed up. The hills were higher than the wall. When Zin reached the top of the hill, he was able to see inside past the walls of Ard Point. Ard Point was quite far from the hills, so Zin took out a pair of high-powered binoculars from his bag and started to monitor the enemies. As he zoomed in, he could even see the moles on their skin.

Because the Reavers had lit up the lamps, Zin was able to identify their location. The Reavers were all gathered in the center of Ard Point. They’d amassed all their trophies, enjoying their victory. What they gathered were chips and corpses. The Reavers didn’t seem to be into torturing, and it looked like none were left alive.

Reavers who arm themselves heavily seem to like to leave corpses.

In the center of the gathering was a giant boiling pot, with human legs and arms sticking out of it. In other areas, some Reavers were butchering the dead. Some were kicking around decapitated heads like soccer balls. Some were sleeping and using the corpses as pillows. And some were raping the corpses.

Looking at this hellish scene, Zin kept his cool and tried to assess the situation.

All the corpses had had their heads chopped off, and the heads were lined up in front of the leader as souvenirs. Zin tried to read the leader’s lips.

This! This looks awesome! These guys ate potatoes, and their heads are pretty, like round potatoes. Yo! Byung-Doo! Come over here! Boil and skin them! If you overdo it, I’ll boil your ass!

The leader seemed to be collecting the skulls and was looking through them one at a time. All these skulls were probably going to decorate the leader’s junkwagon. It was common for Reavers, especially the leaders, to have such strange behavior. Picking skulls wasn’t that bizarre for a Reaver.

The underling started boiling the three heads in the pot, and the leader kept walking around. He stopped in front of one head, and he gnashed his teeth. He grabbed one of the Reavers and asked him:

How many of us died today?

One from the road, five from this battle.

Didn’t this dude kill all of them?

Probably. He shot arrows pretty well.

Bastard…. Man… oh man…. What a waste…

The leader sighed. The skull was that of Baek-Goo’s. For whatever reason, the leader was lamenting.

If the skull looked a little bit prettier, I would have taken it with me.

—crack!—

And without hesitation, the leader stomped and crushed the skull of Baek-Goo. The leader was not lamenting over the fact that he couldn’t recruit Baek-Goo who’d killed five of his men.

—ptoooot!—

After spitting on the crushed skull of Baek-Goo, the leader started looking closely at the other skulls. There really was no reason to take such interest in dead people’s skulls.

—vwooom!—

As soon as Zin remembered what he was looking for, he zoomed out and looked at the whole city. There wasn’t a real reason to search for anything. Also, there was no real reason to start any trouble. But after scouting through the heads lying on the ground, Zin came to a conclusion.

Leona’s head wasn’t there.

He calmly observed the scenes of cannibalization, rape, and slaughter. Zin tried to remain detached from any sort of emotions in the midst of Ard Point’s collapse.

And he kept on trying.

And he thought:

Twenty-nine enemies in total. No long-range weapons, so they can’t get me.

They’ll probably rest here and leave tomorrow.

Four guard posts. They’ll be on guard duty, and the rest will probably sleep.

They’ll fall into a deep sleep after their heavy meals.

It looks like no one will sleep in the prison cells. They’re going to sleep in the city square using the corpses as pillows.

There’s no booze in Ard Point, so no probability that they’ll get drunk.

From this position, I have enough visibility to snipe them all. This is a good spot.

Hmm… is that a CPD (Chaos Poison Drug)? Even better then. Taking dope instead of booze.

Additionally, Zin spotted a couple of Reavers who were taking shots of a mix of cheap drugs.

He thought:

I’ll wait until they go to sleep.

I’ll start with M700 chain-shots. I need to get at least half of them.

If some hide in the buildings, I need to get them with the Saiga-12.

I’ll need at least 29 bullets. If I want to conserve shotgun ammo, I need to snipe as much as I can.

This will probably be a battle with low-returns. I’ll have to finish this using ordinary ammo only.

Because Zin had to deal with many humans, he had to consider using a hand grenade. Using a grenade was possible, but it meant a loss of resources. Zin took out one of his firearms, a Saiga-12, from his bag and loaded it with ammo.

Zin attached the four power scope, and expandable magazine to the M700. It was a good distance to take advantage of a silencer. He could take down the enemies without alerting them too much. Lastly, Zin attached the long silencer to the M700, and strapped the Saiga to his shoulder. The extra long silencer reduced the sound as well as the flash of the gunfire. From a different perspective, the silencer was deadlier than a firearm.

Zin looked through the scope and observed the situation at Ard Point. If he had enough dark-born energy, he could have used an auto-aiming support. But because he had to conserve his energy, he decided to snipe them manually with his skills.

The magazine had ten bullets.

One shot per second should do it.

Zin had the ambitious plan of sniping ten enemies in ten seconds. As soon as the Reavers fell asleep, they would experience a hell within a hell.

Unaware that a sniper was observing them from the hills, the Reavers finished eating and then went to sleep. There were four who were on guard duty, so the rest of them went to sleep in a hurry before it was their turn to be on duty.

The weather was cool enough to sleep outside. There were some who slept inside, but these were few. And because of the cool weather, they would soon be facing death. Nobody was able to see the gun flash from the trees on the hill.

—zip!—

A Reaver that was struck in the head fell over without a scream. The sentries were looking at different directions, and they hadn’t realized that one of them was down.

Another sliver of a gun flash appeared.

—zip!—

Another guard went down.

The silencer quieted the sharp sound of the rifle into a less intrusive sound. The silenced gunshot would fade away by the time it reached the walls of Ard Point. The Reavers would only hear the sound of the bullets piercing through their foreheads. Two more shots were fired and all the Reavers on top of the wall went down without a scream. The long-ranged sniping gave no hint of warning to the Reavers. One Reaver at a time was succumbing to Zin’s sniping.

—click!—

Zin scouted the walls of Ard Point and its enemies. The enemies were all sleeping in one location. Even a silencer couldn’t muffle the sound of a bullet piercing through the air. Once he fired shots to the group, some of them would notice the attack and start fleeing to the buildings. It was important to take down as many as possible before that happened.

Using buckshot wouldn’t be a bad choice here…

A single shot would kill several of them, but the explosion would send the enemies fleeing in terror. Zin was wondering whether he should kill them silently or kill them with a bang.

Zin’s choice was pretty simple.

I should still use regular ammo.

Buckshot was expensive. Zin loaded five more bullets into the magazine and aimed again. The leader was sleeping on the pile of headless corpses. After taking down the guards, Zin was going for the leader. Taking down the chain of command was the best strategy.

Taking into consideration the wind’s direction and the laws of gravity, Zin aimed at the leader’s head. He held his breath and slowly calculated the trajectory of the shot. Right before Zin was about to pull the trigger, he frowned.

What the heck is that?

—zip!—

In the middle of the open field where the Reavers were sleeping, an arrow flew and struck the ground.

“What was that sound?”

One of the sleeping Reavers woke up and looked at where the arrow had landed.

“What is that?”

There was an arrow, and on it, something was shining with a blue light.

—vrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!—

“Huh, what the…?”

As the Reaver felt that something wrong, other Reavers woke up one after another. The violently-shaking object was a chipbox that was about to explode. The Reavers realized what it was, but it was too late for them to run away from it.

“What’s going on? What’s with all the fuss… huh?”

The leader had also woken up too late.

—flash!—

An explosive blue light flashed, and the leader murmured in disbelief.

“What the f—?”

—baaaaaam!—

A huge explosion covered the whole Ard Point square. Looking at the explosion, Zin also murmured:

“Son of a…”

Zin could figure out what it was. It was the chipbox that he’d given to Leona.

“Wow… impressive.”

Leona was marveling at the sight from one of the prison cell windows. Nothing was left in sight. The people that the Reavers had killed and the Reavers themselves had all been wiped out.

“Bastards, you’re not getting away alive after destroying my new home.”

Leona laughed and scouted the rest of the area carefully. She assumed that the sentry guards on the walls would be coming after the huge explosion. There were four guards, and she thought that she could safely flee after taking those four out. But Leona did not know that all of them were already dead. Leona didn’t let her guard down easily, and she always looked for places to hide in case of trouble. When the Reavers first attacked, she quickly hid herself in a concealed space above the ceiling of one of the prison cells. In the end, Leona had been able to survive because of her old instincts as a thief.