ALL NOVEL The Final Circle
"Nyahahaha! Let's gooooo!" Ries laughed, pulling out her minigun to point at the smoke cloud.
The barrels of her minigun started to spin before a high pitched whine echoed throughout the stadium when it started firing.
She slowly rotated towards the right, the trail of bullets following her rotation as she cleaved an arc through the smoke with her minigun.
That plan worked at least since I saw a kill notification pop out from the corner announcing Ries taking out two guys.
Unfortunately, the rest either managed to tank the hits or avoid it as there were no more casualties after that.
Without much of a choice, Ries and I headed into the smoke, aiming to reach the machine gun nest that the duo had set up.
Amber would be skirting around the edge of the smokescreen to do a flanking manoeuvre and Lea had plopped herself down at the very edge of the circle to set up a sniping position.
I separated myself from Ries and ran towards where I remember the fortification to be, hoping that I could reach there in time before those two teams wiped out the machine gun duo.
Gunshots started ringing out from in front of me and I knew the two, or more accurately three, teams had made contact.
A few stray bullets whizzed past me and I dove towards the ground just before several more flew through the space where I had been.
The hail of bullets did not stop so I had to start crawling forward to advance while avoiding the deadly projectiles.
I grunted from the annoyance of needing to crawl until I found myself looking at something resembling a foot.
I looked up to see that I had reached the machine gun nest and there was someone crouching down on this side of the wall taking cover from said machine gun as well. I seem to have interrupted him mid heal as he had one of those syringes in his hand and hovering it over his arm.
The both of us looked at each other for a good minute before I lifted my gun to shoot him in the head.
That single shot was enough to kill him and he disappeared into particles, allowing me to advance forward to take his spot instead.
"Jack! You done healing yet?! We're gonna jump over the wall on three! You ready?!" Someone shouted from my left.
No one responded and I guessed the guy I just killed was named Jack so I intentionally lowered my voice an octave before shouting out, "Ready!"
"One! Two! Three! Go, go, go!"
I stayed where I was as the other team jumped over the wall and something exploded which I assumed must have been from a grenade that was thrown beforehand.
Gunshots rang out from behind the wall and I took out the grenades that I saved for just this occasion.
I quickly uncapped one and activated it before tossing over the wall, not even waiting for it to explode before I uncapped a second one.
The second one was also tossed over the wall in a slightly different direction than the first and I had just activated the third grenade before the first one exploded.
I lobbed the third one over and picked up my swords, keeping my head down as the second grenade exploded which gave me a kill in the kill feed and the third one blew up two more.
I jumped over the wall just as the smoke began to clear, revealing five guys remaining after the grenades I tossed. One of them was the machine gun guy while the other four were from the larger group with two members remaining from each team.
The good thing was that they were still down on the ground so they were in the midst of recovering and unable to fight back.
What that meant was that I had all the time I needed to activate the Sword Dash skill where an aiming reticle popped up in my vision with a white bar at the bottom.
I targeted the first person closest to me and the bar depleted slightly, but it looks like there was enough in the bar to target everyone anyway.
I quickly selected the other four as targets before activating the skill again.
My vision shifted and my body moved on its own, pulling me towards the first guy I had chosen as my target.
The sword in my left hand passed through his body before I was wrenched away towards my second target where I was directed to slash with the sword in my right hand by the skill.
The slash didn't even finish its arc before I was propelled towards the third and fourth targets, my arms flailing out to cut both of them through the neck before I stabbed my sword forward in a thrusting motion and shot towards the last guy.
The blade was stabbed into his chest and the skill ended, right as the five guys disappeared into particles of light.
Damn… This skill is pretty OP eh?
The rest of the smoke cleared up and it seems like that power armour guy was still making his way towards us with about a few metres left to go.
I was just about to start shooting at him when I saw my shield bar suddenly deplete itself.
I panicked and realised there was someone behind me, my mind instantly remembering that there was one guy left that had the active camouflage ability.
Turning around, I saw him lifting his pistol to point at my head to finish me off, his finger already pressing on the trigger as he got ready to fire.
There was a gunshot from the side, a bullet hitting my attacker in the head and shattering his shield.
Amber appeared from the side, her own camouflage skill deactivating as she fired another shot from her second pistol at my attacker.
This one hit him in the chest but it was not enough to kill him, only serving to make him panic as he lifted the pistol in his hand with more urgency hoping that he could at least take me out with him.
Another gunshot sounded from further away and Lea's sniper round pierced through his head from the side, reducing him to particles before he could fire at me.
That was a close one…
"Tera! Are you alright?!" Amber screamed, rushing towards me.
I waved at her, "I'm alright. He only got my shields. And it's not like I was in real danger right?"
"I still don't like watching you get shot!"
"You can worry about me later, we still aren't finished here yet."
All of us turned to the final remaining enemy who was still stomping towards us in his power armour, seemingly not at all concerned that we outnumbered him.
Lea fired a shot from her sniper that ricocheted off the helmet, dealing no damage to him at all.
I went ahead to man the mounted machine gun while Amber and Ries stood by my sides and we sharted shooting at him.
The power armour guy paused and the surface of his armour glowed blue before it projected some kind of translucent blue bubble around him.
All of our bullets lost their momentum the moment it entered the field, dropping down onto the ground harmlessly at his feet.
Even Lea's sniper wasn't able to pierce through that bubble and landed in the same area as our bullets.
He then continued walking and the bubble followed him, the guy getting closer and closer to us.
Ries switched out her minigun to a grenade launcher and shot a round at the bubble.
Unsurprisingly, the grenade also stopped in midair before landing on the ground. That did not stop the grenade from exploding and it blew up directly underneath the power armour's feet, throwing up a cloud of dust as it did so.
Ries did not stop at one and loaded another one and fired, blowing him up again before firing another one.
She continued to fire until she ran out of grenades and switched back to her minigun.
Obviously, we knew it did not work because there was no kill feed message so we weren't surprised to see him walk out of the dust cloud relatively unscathed.
The defence on that thing is such a cheat! How the hell are we supposed to deal with this when he's pretty much immune to explosions and that stupid bubble blocks any bullets?!
Ries let out a roar before running towards him at a slightly faster speed than that guy's walking speed.
I let her go as I suspected that she was trying to see if shooting at him from inside the bubble would make a difference as compared to shooting at him from outside.
Just as she reached the bubble however, the guy suddenly jumped forward and closed the distance, the bubble disappearing to change his power armour into a gold colour right before it let out a blast of electricity around it.
Ries was stunned by the electrical discharge, prompting the guy to pull back a fist before punching forward into her abdomen with a rocket powered fist.
There was a loud crash before Ries disappeared, turning into particles.
Noooo!! How dare you hit the cat girl?!!