Nate gasped for breath, sweat and dust running down his forehead.
How many were left?
He quickly ran through the numbers in his head.
Five killed by assassination, eight taken out in direct combat.
Counting the one who was still alive but no longer able to fight, that made thirteen.
If the intelligence was accurate, four remained.
The wound in his arm burned like fire, blood dripping from his elbow onto the floor.
Nate tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt, clamped one end between his teeth, and used his left hand to wrap it twice around the wound before pulling it tight.
It hurt like hell, but at least the bleeding had stopped for now.
Only a few rounds remained in the Rattler’s magazine, so Nate swapped it for a full one.
He had only fired five rounds from his pistol.
In a high-intensity firefight like this, he realized a handgun barely got any chance to shine.
The suppressive power of a long gun over a handgun was simply too great.
The gunfire suddenly stopped.
Nate held his breath and listened.
The warehouse fell eerily silent.
No deafening gunfire, no voices, not even footsteps.
The hum of the lights overhead suddenly seemed painfully loud.
The enemy had already pinpointed Nate’s position.
They were waiting.
Waiting for him to expose himself, waiting for him to run out of ammunition, waiting for him to make a mistake.
Nate quickly leaned half his head out from behind the pillar for a glance, then immediately pulled back as several bullets whizzed past his ear.
Fuck!
He couldn’t see anyone at all.
Every one of them was hiding behind cover.
They had him completely pinned down.
If he exposed even the slightest part of himself from behind the concrete pillar, he’d be riddled with bullets.
The firepower of automatic weapons was nothing to underestimate, especially when there were several of them pointed his way.
Think.
There had to be some way to break this deadlock.
Use his advantages…
The lights!
That was it.
Nate raised his rifle and fired twice, shattering the lights high overhead and plunging the warehouse into darkness.
With the ceiling lights destroyed, the last steady source of illumination vanished.
The entire world seemed to collapse into a pool of black ink.
“Fuck! Turn on your weapon lights!” someone shouted from the other side.
Taking advantage of that instant of darkness, Nate rolled behind an abandoned boiler and out of the weapon lights’ line of sight.
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, then opened them again.
The system interface glowed faintly across his vision.
In one corner, a Trait quietly lit up: [Eagle Eye: Vision Enhanced by 30%].
The darkness gradually began to recede as his eyes rapidly adjusted.
He could see now.
And the weapon lights, once painfully bright, were no longer an obstacle.
Instead, they had become perfect markers revealing the enemies’ positions.
Two weapon lights shone from ahead, both within ten meters of him.
One enemy was hidden behind a pile of scrap, the beam from his weapon light shining through gaps in the debris and sweeping the area ahead in a fan.
The second was crouched in the shadow of an abandoned machine, his weapon light set to strobe and aimed toward the concrete pillar.
One more man had kept his weapon light off and remained hidden in the darkness.
Judging from the sound, he was somewhere ahead and to the right, behind cover.
Nate couldn’t make out his exact position, but the man was definitely keeping his weapon trained on him.
Three men, three directions.
Every angle around the concrete pillar was covered.
A stalemate.
But for Nate, it was no longer an impossible one.
Guns weren’t ideal right now.
The muzzle flash would reveal his position.
But Nate had something that produced no flash at all.
He silently slid to the left edge of the boiler and reached into his system Backpack with his left hand, drawing three throwing knives and holding them in his palm.
Three knives.
Three men.
First, he’d deal with the two ahead and to the left with their lights on.
Their positions were obvious, so they were easy enough.
The only real threat was the one hiding in the dark.
He’d have to take the chance.
Nate drew a deep breath and steadied himself before leaning out.
He pressed himself tightly against the edge of the boiler, turning sideways until he presented as little of a target as possible.
Only half his head and his right arm were exposed.
The weapon lights ahead and to the left were still moving.
He didn’t need to look directly at the men.
He only needed the lights to judge their approximate positions.
[Flying Star (Lv. 3): Projectile speed increased by 90%; accuracy correction within 20 meters]
Nate raised his right hand.
Two throwing knives shifted between his fingers, then his arm snapped forward like a whip.
The two black blades cut invisible paths through the darkness, crossing more than ten meters before striking both men with perfect accuracy.
Without any light to catch them, the accelerated throwing knives were impossible to see with the naked eye.
Two soft thuds sounded as the blades sank into flesh.
As the two men fell, their weapon lights swept upward in arcs and pointed toward the ceiling.
“What? No, turn it off, quick…” The last man’s voice came from somewhere higher up on the right.
Nate used the sound to narrow down his position.
His enhanced Eagle Eye vision swept across the darkness until he finally spotted the hidden enemy.
There you are.
The man was hiding behind a shelving unit about fifteen meters ahead and to Nate’s right.
His gun barrel protruded through an opening in the shelves, while the rest of his body remained completely concealed.
Without looking carefully, Nate never would have spotted him.
He threw the last knife.
The jet-black blade spun through the air, curved around, and disappeared behind the shelving unit.
The shelves blocked Nate’s view, leaving him unable to tell whether the knife had hit.
He immediately raised the Rattler, aimed at the shelving, and emptied the magazine into it.
Before the muzzle smoke had even cleared, Nate had already reloaded and stepped out from cover.
Rifle shouldered and ready to fire, he advanced toward the shelving unit.
The throwing knife had buried itself deep into the side of the man’s throat.
He had fallen from behind the shelves and ended up wedged awkwardly in the gap between the shelving unit and an oil drum.
There were plenty of bullet holes in his body as well, but his Body Armor had protected most of his upper body’s vital areas.
He wasn’t quite dead yet.
Blood ran from his mouth, while wet, bubbling sounds gurgled from his throat.
Nate crouched beside him, wrapped his hand around the knife’s hilt, twisted, and pulled.
Blood sprayed out, splattering his sleeve.
The gurgling stopped.
Nate wiped the blade clean on the man’s clothing, returned it to its sheath, then put one final round into his head.
Ahead and to the left, another man lay beside the scrap pile.
A throwing knife was buried directly between his eyebrows, leaving only the handle visible.
His eyes were wide open, his expression frozen at the instant the blade struck him.
Nate stopped beside him and lowered his rifle.
Pfft.
One shot to the side of the head.
Nate didn’t pause.
He turned and walked toward the second man.
He, too, had a throwing knife embedded between his eyebrows and lay motionless in the shadow of the abandoned machinery.
His gun had fallen beside his hand, its tactical flashlight still on, the beam slanting upward toward the ceiling.
Nate gave him a finishing shot as well.
Just then, the walkie-talkie on the corpse crackled to life.
A voice speaking somewhat accented English came through.
Nate could understand it.
“Team Three, Team Three, report in. Why did the gunfire stop over there? Did you eliminate the target?”
The voice came through the static from the radio at the third dead man’s waist.
There was obvious fear in his tone.
After all, this wasn’t a movie.
More than a dozen men had surrounded a single person.
Nothing should have gone wrong.
Nate bent down and pulled the walkie-talkie from the man’s chest.
He pressed the talk button.
He said nothing.
The other end went silent for two seconds.
“Team Three, respond! Respond!” The voice became frantic.
Nate still didn’t answer.
He tossed the walkie-talkie aside and walked over to the hitman he’d shot earlier, the one whose limbs had been riddled with bullets and whose arm had been shattered.
The man was slumped against the corner of a wall.
His other arm and one leg were riddled with bullet holes, and blood had soaked through his combat uniform.
When he saw Nate approaching, the badly bleeding man struggled to force out a smile, trying to show that he posed no threat.
But fear and desperation overwhelmed him at the same time, twisting his features into a grimace.
“Who sent you?” Nate asked quietly.
The man trembled.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Waste of time.”
Pfft.
Nate put a bullet between his eyebrows.
The man slumped to the floor, his body twitching once before going still.
The voice over the walkie-talkie grew increasingly urgent.
The man on the other end kept calling out, until his voice had nearly gone hoarse.
Nate picked up the walkie-talkie, its green indicator still blinking, and raised it to his mouth.
“Wait for me to come up. We can talk face-to-face.”
The man finally got a response.
After realizing who had answered him, his voice turned grim.
“Who are you?”
“Who do you think I am?”
Nate tossed the walkie-talkie aside.
Silence returned to the warehouse.
Only the rumble of the generator in the corner echoed through the vast, empty space.
Nate went through the remaining bodies on the first floor and put a finishing shot into each one, retrieved his throwing knives, then loaded a fresh magazine into the Rattler.
He shouldered the rifle again and headed for the stairs.
One left.