1 Game

In a brightly lit room, a man was sitting on a chair right in front of a computer without a change in his posture. The only thing that moved right now was his hands but for the spectators, it was just the after images of his fingers. The room was going through a pin drop silence without anyone interrupting the heated atmosphere. The man was dressed in a pitch-black jacket as he continued moving his fingers at the speed which made it hard for anyone to track but his body posture didn't change in the slightest.

Even though there were hundreds of people in the same room the focus of anyone entering would go to that man just by the relaxed way he sat on his seat. Even though his face was covered, anyone could tell that the guy was just passing the time but little did they know that right now, the game they were all playing was set on broadcast throughout the entire country.

People even came to the stadium to watch the ongoing match on the big screen while the players sat inside a soundproof room.

Outside the room, the sounds of cheers and screams of people would burst anyone's eardrums just by being near the stadium which fulfilled the demand of the company sponsoring it. The commentator stood on the stage under the big screens and gave his all to increase the spirits of the fans supporting their idols or whatever reason they came here for.

"Hmm, it seems as if the AVA, Z7T, and FHIHanKr are getting out of their way away from the pack. Going solo here will be disadvantageous for them if this is what they are choosing. They seem to be doing what they do every time. Somethings never change I guess."

In the large screen above him where everyone's focus was as of now, a group of people was being thrown from the sky out of nowhere. They flew past the clouds just by thrashing them. In the mid-air itself, many players began closing next to each other. The game was supposed to be an individual game but creating teams was never said to not be allowed. The game was working on only one mission as the trophy because if this mission is completed then winning the game was a given which was to find the heart of an ancient beast that was still not decomposed and the one who finds the heart wins the game without any questions asked as the beast itself helps the player in winning the game because the one who finds its heart becomes the master of the beast.

The map always changes every game as there are more maps than most people can count so there is no way for the player to know what map they will be given. The main quest the players are given is to destroy the world. Yes, the utter destruction of the world is their main task. There are many ways a player can win and the most common one which is used in almost every match is to be the last one standing then the game would automatically tag that person as the winner. There are also many other ways to win which are to use the bugs if you find any but that is practically not possible for someone to use when the whole damn country is watching them. The pressure on their shoulders would make anyone faint but most of them were celebrities so it was no big deal for them by being watched by millions of people.

Still, that only gave them enough confidence to not faint or do any wrong move, they don't have enough confidence in being able to stay in the game when anytime any one of their teammates would be more than happy to kill them even if it was only one mistake. They had to be ready with a countermeasure in case something like that happens and also each one of them has to keep an eye for the enemies if that's not enough completing the side quests that they get at the same time, much less being able to focus on finding bugs, even finding the heart is a hellish journey.

The fight had already begun midair. Players threw whatever attacks they had that was going to work in flight. Suddenly,

*Swish*

a bullet pierced the skull of a player in the middle of the pack focusing on getting out of here without getting noticed by anyone with the rest of his team who didn't agree to it at first because of the risk but, the fruit they would be receiving if their plan was successful made them agree to it reluctantly because of that....the moment they saw the one who was supposed to be the guide in this journey die in the first few seconds the game had begun...it made them sweat profusely. They regretted being too greedy to even agree to this bullshit of a plan but the thing that made them sweat was how the hell did someone even attack them at the very first few seconds of the game. They were reckless but not idiots to use a plan without something to add them in with. They used the premium shield that was the passive ability of one of them and to compliment it with they even had used most of the static points they received at the start of the game to strengthen it.

Though a countermeasure was always ready for anything unexpected but the thing right now that happened was not unexpected but unrealistic in their eyes. To kill one of the best players in the country currently and even that in the starting seconds. One could say that every player in the game right now was equal in their playing style and was quite well versed with their abilities so to say that one of the players was killed not only in midair but also in the starting seconds was just too pathetic for a gamer.

On the other hand, everyone in the audience knew who was the one who shot that guy as they were watching it on the replay right now.

"Not in a lifetime would anyone would have seen that coming, right AVA fans or should I say fangirls?" The commentator turned the mike he was using towards the people sitting on the right side of the stadium which mostly consisted of girls.

*WOOOOOAAAHHHHHHHH*

"AVVVAAAAAA," was the only name that was being heard in the entire stadium as the thing which happened made the other fans shut their mouth and not make their presence heard, or who knows that the next person might not be the one they were cheering for.

On the screen, the scene of people falling out of thin air was being played with a countdown of 60.

The moment the countdown hit 0 the players were allowed to attack each other. Everyone waited for the countdown to hit 0 while counting together with it. The very second the screen had 0, slow motion mode took its effect because of the attack being too fast to normally detect with human eyes.

"3...2...1!!!!!Go"

*Swish*

The player with the whole body covered in black: pitch black coat, trousers, a party cap and a mask with a number written on it- 451208 did a three-sixty turn and the moment his hand and the player with the number- 225431 were parallel to each other, slowly but steadily several blue-colored light particles swirled through his hand and reached his palm in a mere second. The light shape-shifted to a gun the same second it reached his hand. In a blink of an eye, an eye-blinding light was shot from the gun at the angle of 7 degrees to the east and without an ounce of resistance, the light pierced through the shield-like cutting a cake.

The movements were so silent and proportional to his thoughts that instead of a character it felt like they just saw a very well choreographed skill in martial arts but alas that thought didn't last long when they saw the character changing positions in a blink of an eye when the replay was over and the live match was cast on the large screen.

The stadium fell into silence after the replay was over as if most of them couldn't even believe what they just saw. One of them got up and screamed to break the silence,

"What even was that?"

More people began discussing it between themselves and voiced their opinions.

"That shouldn't even be possible"

"I know right. Is he just a hacker but I don't think hacking this game is even possible by how many restrictions this game has?"

"Should we report him"

When the fans of AVA heard them, a fight broke out between the fans of AVA with the....cough whole game franchise. And the reason was that the game was also later made into an animated movie. People texted online about that broken attack which from their perspective should be seriously impossible to pull.

"There is no way what you are saying is right. Cheating is something nobody would do when the whole country is watching this if not millions of people out of the country"

When the sentence was uttered, one of the people in blue jersey spoke up in a kind tone," That may be true miss but the attack he used was by a weapon that is given to everyone at the very start of the game. It is not possible to use the same laser that way. It only helped players at the start of the game but later it works too slow and is most of the time never accurate"

Before the argument could develop any further the commentator dropped the call he was on till now and without a word changed it to a closer clip, which was so slow that the game's every inch of movement was seen. When the camera zoomed on AVA and 225431, the light particles slowly formed the gun the same way and shot the laser the same way but, on the other side, the spectators were able to see how the shield functions.

Usually, it is just transparent but in this mode where every particle movement of the game was visible to naked eyes the way the shield worked was easy to spot. Many particles revolved and rotated so fast that it would not be possible to see them without this mode. There were many holes in the shield's body. The shield was never completely blocking anything. It just made it impossible for anything to enter as long as the particles it was made up of moved fast enough so that anything that attacked it would be reflected or broken into tiny particles.

The light slowly reached the shield and that was when the three-sixty turn, his movement in different directions and the angle of 7 degrees was explained the moment when the light passed through the hole between particles when both of the molecules were in the opposite direction that made the gateway big enough for the light to pass through. Why? Because it was "light" at the end of the day. Nothing was thinner than that in the entire game.

Even though the gun was a weapon for starters it was maxed out completely and the way he used it hit exactly the vital spot of the player- his brain. It pierced the head of the player and still didn't stop but continued even after he was dead. That just showed the velocity of the bullet had was too fast so the answer for why a starter gun could kill someone in the late stages of the game was simple.

The velocity made it possible for the game to give him a critical hit increasing the damage and since the gun was modified to the brim there was a little more damage than what could be normal. Well, no one would upgrade a waste of a weapon to max even for a random match and here a crazy freak was using that same gun to kill a player.

"It seems that he has done it again," That was all the dazed commentator could utter when complete chaos of people talking erupted.

"How the hell did he even manage to use that thing?"

"No, that's not the question but how did he even have that sort of idea since no player knows the infrastructure of the game? The only ones who know about this completely should be the owner of the company and the people who designed the game. Could it be possible that someone told him that," A teen probably 15 spoke her thoughts out loud The people around her became more curious about this and rebuked her statement

"Kid, no owner or any other person is working for this game. This game was designed by only one person who is said to have died as we have no clues as to where he is. So there should be no way that AVA could know the structure of the game," the same guy kindly answered again. He seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the game as the others around him agreed to his words with a nod and stopped thinking about it at once. But that was just for the people around those two not everyone in the stadium knew nor heard that statement so they continued throwing their barrage of questions until the commentator himself clarified their doubts.

"Ladies and gentleman, we don't know anything about the game's developer. Whether he/she or even whether or not is he even alive. We are just the company that owns some rights to the game so the only thing we can do here shows you how the game works and its structure. Everything external is "viewed" by us but even we wouldn't have known the backend of the game if not for the current cameras powerful enough to witness the tiniest details of probably everything. So please don't blame us for it as we don't even know who AVA is much less how he knew it."

Most of the people understood what he meant by it since players who play without making their identity known to make it quite hard to understand how, when, and why they were so hell-bent on being anonymous, their playstyle, and mostly everything about their choices.

So they stopped acting like the white knight in shining armor for the game developer and went back to enjoying the game. That was the sole reason they were even here anyways.

But they didn't switch to any other player as AVA had much more to offer.