“Tuanquan, Runchá, you two made it in as well?”
Tuanquan threw an arm around Drool.
“The three idiots are finally all in one place.”
Drool recoiled three steps.
“What do you mean three idiots?”
Bruceus gave Drool a sideways look.
“You tricked us into eating garbage rations.
What else would you call that?”
“That’s slander!
That’s slander!
He’s slandering me…”
“You’re a streamer.
The whole stream saw it.”
“Back when you used to get ganged up on during streams, you always yelled ‘I’m a streamer, spare me.’ Forgot about that already?”
“My reputation is finished.”
“Come on, so what if we’re a little rough around the edges?
Look at me, I block bridges and evacuation points every day, and my popularity is still off the charts.” Tuanquan crouched down and slung an arm over Drool’s shoulder.
“Are we really the same?” Drool’s eyes lit up slightly.
“Not at all.
Runchá and I are engineering specialists.
Annoying playstyle but very satisfying.
You’re just pure menace.”
“Holy crap?”
Runchá crouched nearby.
“Alright, group, save the content for the stream.
Drool, you’re in the top tier for FPS players and you’ve got a full beta round under your belt.
Share some experience.”
Drool was a first-round player, and his role was to help two new players get up to speed.
Three players to a group, plus their clone soldiers, made for a mixed squad that could handle the underground’s complications more effectively.
First and second-round players held equal rank, but the few extra hours of experience meant the first-round player naturally took point within each trio.
“The control scheme is almost identical across Tarkov, Darkzone, and the three other games we’ve all played.
Barely any difference.”
“Our exoskeletons seem to work similarly to the Red Wolf unit from Darkzone.
No passive regeneration, but significant boosts to strength and endurance.
Pretty much everyone has one.”
“Most importantly, protect your armor.”
“There don’t seem to be any spares, and it doesn’t reset when you log out.”
Drool tapped his chest.
“Look.
The damage on my chest plate is still from before.
It was patched up as an emergency fix, but the durability in that section is permanently reduced.”
“What we do know is that the composite armor can take a direct hit from a large-caliber ork cannon round.”
Tuanquan asked, “You’ve been streaming for seven or eight years, played everything.
Any general advice?”
“My advice is to start exploring as early as possible.
Farm Reputation fast.
This is a survival game.
Every head start counts.”
“Also, the Commander said we can recruit miners.”
Drool’s gaze moved across the miners.
Recruitable.
Trainable.
What man hadn’t imagined leading an army into battle?
The restrictions were still heavy for now, but the dev team had already handed them half the dream to chew on.
…
Miner Reth: “I am Reth.
Do you fight for the Commander?”
Drool: “Of course.
I fight for the Federation Commander.”
Miner Reth: “I have heard of your deeds.”
Drool: “Here are five Reputation points.
My squad needs a warrior like you.”
Miner Reth: “A fair offer.
“For the Commander!”
Miner Reth has joined your combat roster.
“That’s my soldier now?”
Drool felt like he was dreaming.
That easy.
This was his first real recruit.
“Go stand over there.” The miner followed Drool’s instruction and moved to the indicated position without question.
“Jump.”
“Do a flip.”
“He actually just does it?”
The controls were straightforward enough.
The miner knew Drool was one of the Commander’s soldiers, so he took the orders seriously.
This was the God-Emperor’s test through the Federation Commander.
“Tuanquan, Runchá, go recruit miners now.”
“Spend your starting Reputation.
I’ll cover the daily upkeep.”
Recruiting a miner cost five Reputation.
Daily maintenance ran one Reputation per miner.
For Drool, that was nothing.
He had finished the first round as the wealthiest player in the beta.
The most reckless plays, and the biggest payoff.
Having already clocked the value of miners, Drool sent Tuanquan and Runchá off to recruit while he made his way over to the first-round players with a handful of greenskin rations and started talking them up.
“Drool, already eating before you’ve even started?”
“The greenskin rations have a really unique texture,” Drool said with genuine appreciation.
“Especially that mushroom-like quality.”
“Want some?”
A few players started to decline, then Drool said, “My treat.
One for each of you.”
“You’re actually being generous right now?”
“Drool, everyone knows you struck it rich.
Didn’t expect the big spender act though.”
Drool grinned.
“That’s right.
I was the most reckless player in the whole beta.
You know what that means?
I was tearing through orks one after another.”
“And then got launched across the map by a single cannon shot?”
“Oi, Vrekk, don’t ruin it.”
“He’s not wrong though.
Drool had the highest ork kill count out of anyone.”
“Hehehe.
keep it low-key.
I’m quite shy.”
With that framing in place, every player descended on the free food on the time-honored principle that only a fool turns down something free.
Vrekk rubbed his chin.
Something felt off.
“This rat wouldn’t be this generous without a reason.”
He still felt sick thinking about the time Drool had tricked him into eating those canned food.
The ones made from people.
What he didn’t know was that the pool of available miners was fixed.
Some had gone with Antor and Annie into the engineering section to modify equipment.
Others were reinforcing the camp structure.
Those miners weren’t going anywhere.
But they were also perfectly suited to underground work in a way no one else could match.
A lifetime in the mines meant they understood subsurface structures the way others understood breathing.
Those who hadn’t figured it out were already dead.
The remaining free miners numbered only a few dozen.
Aldric had already capped player recruitment to guarantee at least one miner per player.
But some players were inevitably going to end up with just one.
With thirty players and only forty-odd free miners, at least half the roster could only get a single recruit.
The system had a floor built in so that once supply ran short, it locked to a maximum of one per player. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Of course, miners who finished their repair and reinforcement duties would become recruitable afterward.
And if a miner died, one recruitment slot was permanently lost.
Before anyone else had worked it out, the quietly scheming Drool had already moved.
He had spotted the value, sent Tuanquan and Runchá in early, and secured the advantage.
The underground was not a solid collapse.
It was more like crushed fried dough, full of interlocking hollow passages running in every direction.
The ground beneath them had been almost completely hollowed out.
And it was extremely dangerous.
Miners were the only currency that mattered down here.
Even the miners themselves were at risk.
Vrekk watched the number of miners in camp drop and immediately knew something was wrong.
“Hold on.
That rat went and recruited miners.
There aren’t enough to go around!”
Every player looked up at Vrekk’s voice.
“We’ve been had.”
One step too slow.
When recruitment closed out, everyone looked at each other.
Not enough miners.
Every first-round player’s squad was understaffed.
Only Drool had a full roster.
Bruceus looked at the three miners standing behind him and let out a stream of curses.
“Drool, you absolute animal!”
As for Drool himself.
He had already taken his squad underground and started exploring.
The reason he moved so early was simple.
He was afraid of getting hit.
Once every player entered the buried zone, the miners’ value became immediately obvious.
Armed with the powered excavation picks Antor and Annie had modified, they cracked through rock with ease.
Then came the welding torches and iron rods, used to frame safe passages through the rubble.
The iron rods were smelted directly from ore pulled out of the walls, shaped on the spot.
Excess ore could be traded in to offset a portion of the daily Reputation cost.
The underground was full of dangers on every side.
One of the main objectives Aldric had set for the players was energy collection, which meant hunting rock-borers.
The strange, tangled psionic disturbances running through the rock were grinding at every living thing in the area, driving the rock-borers into a panicked frenzy through the tunnels.
“Rock-borer!”
The miner who spotted it immediately abandoned his position and ran.
Bruceus locked his eyes on the tunnel ahead.
Crack.
Crack.
A pair of mandibles pushed through the rock face.
Every player who hadn’t seen one before flinched hard.
“What the hell is that thing!”
Rock-borers were unsettling to look at under any conditions.
Underground, with those mandibles catching the light, they looked far worse.
“I have no idea!”
“Open fire!”
Ratta-tat-tat.
A short burst.
The rock-borer was dead in seconds.
“These are way easier to put down than the orks.”
Orks wore metal chest plates several centimeters thick, which bled off most of a round’s energy before it could do real damage.
Bruceus watched the rounds pass clean through the rock-borer and out the other side.
“Is the penetration a bit excessive?”
“I remember the update added an ammunition purchase system.
There was a type called standard rounds.”
That thought sent him jogging back to camp immediately.
He wanted to swap his loadout.
“Military-spec rounds are that expensive?”
“These standard rounds are actually good value.”
Military-spec rounds cost several times more than standard.
Something clicked for Bruceus, and a sinister smile appeared on his face.
He left camp and went to find the other first-round players who were already out exploring.