On the apartment balcony, Anatoly stared at the man beside him, who was clutching his ear and screaming in pain, and felt a chill run down his spine.
If Vladimir hadn’t stopped him from sticking his own head over the railing just now, he would have been the one missing an ear.
Anatoly patted his chest, still shaken.
“Brother, that son of a bitch is too damn accurate. What do we do now?”
Vladimir frowned and swept his gaze around the balcony until he spotted the rappelling rope secured to the railing.
After thinking for a moment, a vicious smile of anticipation spread across his face.
“Shoot through the rope. If Jason falls thirty or forty meters, he can forget about standing again for the rest of his life. Then we can take him alive and hand him over to Kingpin.”
“Good idea!”
Anatoly pulled out a .45-caliber Colt M1911 and fired twice at the rappelling rope.
Two gunshots rang out.
The thick rope was punched full of holes, but it didn’t snap.
“This rope’s too damn tough,” Anatoly said in surprise.
“Military-grade rappelling rope,” Vladimir explained.
“It’s made from some of the strongest composite fibers available. Usually gets used with helicopters.”
“That son of a bitch really did prepare for everything.” Anatoly sneered and stepped forward to fire again.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Bang!
Bang!
Hearing the gunshots from the apartment above, Jason immediately knew the thing he’d feared most had happened.
Faster!
Come on, faster!
His heart burned with urgency as he accelerated his descent.
Bang!
Bang!
Another two gunshots rang out.
The rappelling rope snapped.
Jason instantly lost his support and plunged toward the pavement with his back facing the ground.
He was still roughly fifteen meters up.
A fall from that height, flat on his back, would either kill him outright or leave him bedridden for the rest of his life.
At the critical moment, Jason’s survival instincts and years of brutal training kicked in.
Despite having nothing to brace himself against in midair, he twisted his body using nothing but the strength of his waist and core, forcing himself back into balance until his feet faced the ground.
The instant he corrected his posture—
Thud!
Jason slammed into the pavement.
Dust burst up around him.
He immediately threw himself forward and rolled several times across the ground, bleeding away as much of the impact as possible.
The unbelievable maneuver left the surrounding onlookers speechless.
They stood there staring stupidly as Jason crouched on the ground, clutching his ankle with pain written across his face.
Falling fifteen meters was no small thing.
Even though Jason had prepared himself for the impact, both feet went numb the instant he landed.
Then came a burst of agonizing pain so intense that he could barely feel them at all.
Jason gritted his teeth and forced himself upright.
Staggering badly, he headed toward the five story shopping mall across the street.
It was crowded and had a complicated layout.
Perfect for shaking off pursuit.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“He fell from that high and still managed to get back up. Lucky bastard.”
Vladimir watched Jason stumbling away and gave a contemptuous sneer.
“But his luck ends here.”
Anatoly grinned as well and raised his automatic rifle, aiming at Jason’s back.
“Yeah. Kingpin’s number one enforcer, running around like a stray dog. Pathetic.”
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Jason had barely taken a few steps when three shots cracked behind him.
The tremendous force striking his body armor hurled him to the ground.
“Ah!”
The fearless spectators who had remained nearby screamed the moment they saw Jason get shot.
Like startled birds in a forest, the crowd scattered in every direction.
The instant Jason hit the ground, he scrambled back to his feet.
He knew perfectly well that if he stayed down for even one second, those Russian mobsters with automatic rifles would turn him, and the body armor protecting him, into Swiss cheese.
Jason juked left and right, deliberately running toward the densest parts of the fleeing crowd and using innocent pedestrians as human shields.
It was a thoroughly selfish and vicious tactic.
But it worked astonishingly well.
More than a dozen 7.62mm rounds came tearing toward him.
Several innocent bystanders were hit and immediately collapsed to the pavement, screaming in agony.
Jason himself, despite being the actual target, took only a stray round to his left arm.
He endured the searing pain, pressed hard against the wound, and sprinted toward the mall with everything he had left.
[Ding! You indirectly killed one innocent civilian. You have earned 100 Villain Points. Current progress: 640/1,000.]
[Ding! You indirectly wounded six innocent civilians. You have earned 300 Villain Points. Current progress: 940/1,000.]
At the cost of seven innocent civilians and one injured arm, Jason finally made it into the mall.
He burst into an ice cream shop near the entrance, threw himself across the counter, and rolled over it to take cover behind the register.
Without even stopping to catch his breath, Jason immediately removed his right hand from the wound and checked the damage to his left arm.
Through the mangled flesh, he could faintly see the dark yellow base of a bullet.
The round was lodged inside the muscle.
Must’ve been a ricochet.
Otherwise it would’ve gone straight through my arm.
With more than a decade’s worth of experience getting shot, Jason immediately understood the situation.
Breathing heavily, he carefully probed the wound with the fingers of his right hand.
Once he felt the hard bullet, he pinched it between his fingertips.
Jason held his breath.
Then pulled.
Blood soaked through his clothes and pants.
His lips went pale, and cold sweat covered his forehead.
Bone deep agony surged through his entire body, and it took everything he had not to groan aloud.
Clink…
clink…
The bullet hit the floor.
Jason pressed one hand over the freely bleeding wound, then used his teeth to tear a strip from his sleeve and wrapped it around his arm as a crude bandage.
He had barely finished when footsteps sounded outside.
The spectators had already fled.
There was only one possible source for those footsteps now.
The Russian Mafia.
They’re really not giving me a damn chance to breathe.
Weakly raising one hand, Jason opened the Shop interface.
He was trapped.
At this point, the system was his only possible way out.
━━━━━ SHOP ━━━━━
🔥 Melee Weapons Mastery
🔥 Combat Mastery
🔥 Firearms Mastery
🔥 Driving Mastery
🔥 Piloting Mastery
🔥 Special Operations Mastery
🔥 Special Vehicle Mastery
…
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The footsteps drew closer.
Jason rapidly scanned the Shop while his mind raced, desperately trying to figure out what Ability could get him out of this situation alive.
Several seconds later, he selected Firearms Mastery.
Under the current circumstances, he really couldn’t think of a better option than a gun.
━━━━━ SHOP ━━━━━
[Firearms Mastery]
✓ Level 1 (Acquired)
✓ Level 2 (Acquired)
✓ Level 3 (Acquired)
✓ Level 4 (Acquired)
✘ Level 5 (Not Acquired)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jason selected Level 5.
[Requirements: 50 Credits | Strength: 30 | Agility: 35 | Endurance: 30 | Intelligence: 35.]
“Bullshit! What kind of shitty system has prerequisite requirements?”
Jason cursed irritably and hurriedly opened the main system interface to check his attributes.
Attribute
━━━━ ATTRIBUTE ━━━━
✪ Strength: 33
✪ Agility: 32
✪ Endurance: 30
✪ Intelligence: 28
✪ Remaining Points: 0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His Four Core Attributes were still a total of ten Attribute Points short of the requirements for Firearms Mastery | Level 5.
And every Level increase awarded exactly ten Attribute Points.
Jason was only sixty Villain Points away from Level 2.