Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 749: Chapter 709: Putting down the gun and playing with cold weapons?

“Suka blyat! What kind of peeping tom?!”

Thinking that he might have been spied on ever since he logged into the game, Ivan Ivanov felt goosebumps all over his body and blurted out a curse.

He raised the gun and aimed at the space above the killer’s bleeding leg—

“Pah!”

It was a paintball.

A bright green stain burst-open in the air, outlining a strange chest protector that seemed like a steel plate or an exoskeleton.

Ivan didn’t have time to think, controlling the muzzle and shooting a second shot.

“Bang!”

Both sides fired at the same time.

Ivan fell to the ground with a groan.

His bullet hit the mark, right above the green paint, supposedly the head area.

But the bullet was deflected off!

There was actually an iron helmet on the opponent’s head!

With the enemy having armor and him having none, the outcome was already decided.

Ivan chose the wooden house as his respawn point, rushed out with a shotgun again, and saw the guy trying to escape!

Seizing the rare opportunity, Ivan began chasing without thinking, shooting while running.

Then he was shot in the chest while the enemy turned around, dying once more.

Resurrect, chase, shoot, and die again.

Ivan had never experienced such a painful pursuit in his previous hunts in the game!

He couldn’t even tell if he was hunting down someone else or just delivering kills to the enemy willingly.

It wasn’t until the enemy disappeared into a forest that Ivan’s greatest accomplishment was shooting the enemy in the side of the abdomen.

He was puzzled: what kind of armor would cover the chest while leaving the abdomen exposed?

Did this make any sense??

Ivan’s doubts arose because he hadn’t played “Dinosaur Island” for long.

Players who had spent more time on “Dinosaur Island” noticed that as the armor level increased, its resistance went up but its coverage area became ridiculously smaller!

After upgrading to level 3 armor, both male and female characters’ stomachs would be exposed, which was quite outrageous.

If they didn’t want to reveal themselves or were psychologically insecure, constantly worried about their stomachs being hit, they had to actively tell the armorsmith during the upgrading process to cover their stomachs.

Otherwise, they had to wait until level 5 to find fully-covering armor. Of course, at that time, there were still armor variations available that highlighted the figure, exposing the stomach, back, and thighs.

Male players could even expose their entire upper body, wearing just a belt across their chest as their top.

Even though the materials needed to make this belt were identical to a full-coverage armor piece…

Don’t ask why; it’s just a game feature.

…

After losing the killer’s trail, Ivan calmed down and, after some thinking, found a pattern:

Although the killer could take the initiative, he always used a cold weapon to stab him at close range, never killing him with a hot weapon in one shot.

Hot weapons were only used after Ivan fired first.

So—

“Is this a killer with a samurai spirit?”

Ivan felt it was absurd, but he still logged into the Cloud Dream Games forum’s “Hunter” section, wanting to share this discovery with other players.

But after logging into the forum, he found that there was already a pinned post calling for everyone to share the clues they discovered and work together to solve the opponent.

So Ivan entered the post and described his thoughts and the evidence supporting them.

After publishing, he scrolled down through the post to see what insights other players had.

*

Receiving countless likes and ranked at the top of the players’ preferences was Annan anchor Ruan Qingrong.

He and his teammates had discovered two important patterns, and paid the blood-price for each—

At first, they painstakingly laid out a large number of traps, covering almost all the land within a 30-meter radius around them.

With utmost confidence, Ruan Qingrong and his teammates stood surrounded by layers of traps, announcing to all audience members in the live broadcast room: “No one can silently break through this trap formation!”

“Whoever comes will die!”

But as soon as his words fell, he suddenly found his teammates staring at his face in horror.

“What’s wrong?” Ruan Qingrong was puzzled.

He couldn’t see it, but the teammates and the audience could see clearly that three laser red dots were aimed at his face, forming an equilateral triangle.

“Is it… a sniper rifle?!” The teammates weren’t sure, because there was no need to use three snipers for one head, right?

The answer was revealed in the next moment: a bright plasma light cluster suddenly appeared in the air ahead, so dazzling that it stood out even in broad daylight!

In the next instant, the dazzling plasma light cluster shot rapidly towards the three red laser dots.

“Bang!”

Without any suspense, all 8 players were blown away by the plasma cannon simultaneously.

The teammates at the edge of the explosion looked charred.

As for Ruan Qingrong standing in the middle, he experienced a gruesome death scene of being blown apart into a liquid state—Lincoln was merciful, not depicting blood splatters, but rather a light blue plasma explosion effect.

Although it still looked tragic, at least it wouldn’t leave psychological scars on his teammates…

So, the entire team was sent airborne by a single shoulder cannon shot.

After reviving, Ruan Qingrong stubbornly said, “I was right, wasn’t I? He couldn’t break through the trap formation!”

Afterwards, they reviewed the video, and from the flash of the plasma cannon firing, they saw a shoulder outline, a metal helmet, and the long, thin tubular strands of the murderer’s hair.

Ruan Qingrong thus summed up two important pieces of information:

First: Do not completely block the killer’s path, or he will become enraged and fire directly.

Second: The killer has dreadlocks and is likely African American.

After experiencing this attack, Ruan Qingrong did not give up on the trap strategy.

“So it’s just a bombing? It’s not like we haven’t been bombed before!”

He led the Annan players to expand the scale of the traps, not only digging deeper pits but also connecting all the traps, forming an underground tunnel network!

In order to accommodate the killer’s bulky figure, they even deliberately widened the tunnel, lest the killer refuse to go down.

Basically, all the time that other players used to fight the killer was spent digging the tunnel.

In the end, after completing this enormous project, Ruan Qingrong and his teammates hid underground and briefly explained their idea to the audience: “The plasma cannon cannot fire indefinitely. As long as it runs out of energy and doesn’t kill us, he must enter our traps!”

“And once he steps into the traps, he enters our rhythm.”

“He’s doomed!”

“Next, all we need to do is wait quietly.”

Everyone waited quietly for a minute.

Until—

“Thunk!”

A metal canister was thrown into the hole, clattering and rolling, stopping just in front of Ruan Qingrong by sheer coincidence.

“What is… this thing?”

“Hiss—hiss—hiss—”

A strong yellow smoke spewed out of the metal can, quickly filling the entire cave.

“Chó má!” Ruan Qingrong cursed his bad luck, covering his mouth and scrambling out.

At first, his teammates didn’t take it seriously since there were no adverse feelings in the virtual world. So why panic?

But just two seconds later, they too started wailing and frantically crawling out.

——The smoke was too choking!

This was a special smoke grenade exclusive to the event, with a very realistic sensation.

Actually, when the mysterious murderer stabbed them to death, the sensory experience was richer, even accompanied by a slight pain.

These explorations of negative sensations were tests and preparations for “Chang’an.”

Lincoln, as a kid, has had his fair share of scrapes, falls, stitches, and hospitalizations; he has a much more abundant pain reserve than the average person.

Of course, he has never experienced what it feels like to be stabbed or cut by someone else.

He only experienced a knife when having his appendix removed, and that was under general anesthesia, so he didn’t feel anything when he woke up.

However, he did feel pain for a long time afterward…

Such a sensory reserve is naturally not comprehensive.

But Lincoln doesn’t plan to experience what it feels like to be stabbed…

He never intended to pursue 100% realism in terms of negative sensations anyway; there’s no need to make players feel unbearable pain—that would be too crazy.

——

Annan players lined up and crawled out of the underground tunnel one by one.

The killer stood outside, shooting them one by one.

The scene was too gruesome to watch.

Ivan was amazed.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

After flipping through several pages and satisfying his curiosity, Ivan summarized the six most widely accepted pieces of information:

First: principle of equality.

If you use hot weapons, the killer will use hot weapons; if you use cold weapons, the killer will use cold weapons.

Second: Absolute silence during hunting will result in the killer using heavy weapons.

Third: Always hiding inside without coming out will result in being driven out by non-lethal weapons, whether hiding underground, in a cave, or elsewhere.

Fourth: The killer will not attack unarmed people; if you don’t carry any weapons, you will not be attacked.

Fifth: If there are more than four players, the killer will attack in a “hunting” manner, looking for opportunities to beat them one by one.

Sixth: The killer is very ugly.

——

Ivan stared at the fourth piece of information and immediately thought of a crucial thing — the Armament Box.

If you have an armament box and hide a shotgun in it, will the killer think you are unarmed because he can’t see the weapon?

“No, that’s not it. If that’s the case, he might give up hunting.”

Ivan corrected his thinking: “You should also hold a knife.”

Once the killer approaches with a knife, you can take the firearms out of the Armament Box and give the killer a surprise close-up shot!

“So that’s how Cloud Dream arranged it?” Ivan felt like he had figured out Cloud Dream’s thought process.

And logically deduced:

The players with the highest winning rates on the Extraordinary Battlefield will get the Armament Box tomorrow.

Once they have the Armament Box, the difficulty of the Cross-Border Pursuit is bound to decrease, and the players who complete the bounty missions will likely surge.

So, if you want to get one of the first three commemorative badges, you must finish the battle beforehand!

And the best way to defeat the killer in advance is to—

Use cold weapons for combat?!