*Krrrr….

The door opened slowly as the man looked around cautiously. Seeing that no one was near him, he sighed in relief.

‘A little further…’ Shiro thought so she could make sure all of the traps worked to their full potential.

Shiro’s eyes were steady and calm. Watching him walk step by step, she pulled back a little more on her bow. At this point, the strings were nearing their limit so Shiro knew she had to fire the bow soon.

‘NOW!’

She let go of her arrow as soon as he stepped into her strike zone.

*BOOMMMM!!!!!

At the same time, the traps set off, sending sharp pillars of ice stabbing towards the man.

The ice pierced through him before he could react, ending him instantly.

His body shook for a slight moment before shattering into light.

“Phew…” Shiro sighed in relief as she landed back on the ground.

Thawing the ice as to not give her position away, she checked his loot.

‘Blue sword, 5 HP potions, 3 MP potions, green staff, blue bag plus some armour that boosted movement speed and attack power.’ Shiro thought, taking the gear she needed.

Looking back at the hospital, she wondered if there are still items inside for her to loot.

‘No. I should keep moving to avoid the other players discovering me when they arrive here.’

Since her attack had caused quite a commotion, Shiro needed to move quickly to avoid the level 50’s that might arrive.

She paused for a second as she had an idea. Scavenging the surrounding trash, she managed to find herself quite a few bottles.

Since this was a simulation, she didn’t know if this would work.

Jumping up, she parkoured from rail to ledge until she was a few floors under the roof.

Climbing through the window of the building next to the hospital, Shiro made sure that her shadow couldn’t be seen.

Looking for a nearby table, she grabbed her sword and cut one of the legs off.

Making a few cuts, she was left with the top of the table leg looking like an h. She then cut the bottom of the bottle off before placing it in the groove of the table leg. 

Securing her sword near the bottom of the bottle, she pulled on the plastic. 

‘It works.’ Shiro thought with a smile. The bottle started to spin as the knife would cut the plastic into one long continuous strip.

Her goal was to make a plastic rope for her to hold her weapons for easier access. While the bag was useful, it still took a while to pull out her weapon. Making it inefficient in battle.

She continued this for several bottles until she had a pile of plastic strips next to her.

She started to thread them together to form a rope.

Looking at the final results, Shiro was surprised the simulation even allowed her to do this and even graded it green.

Strapping the rope diagonally across her body, she connected the spear to the rope. She made it so that she could easily pull the spear off her back should it be needed.

Moving around a little, she found that it wasn’t too obstructive which was good news to her.

She peaked out the window and saw that no one had arrived.

‘Seems like my position hasn’t been discovered yet.’ Shiro thought as she put a MP potion in her mouth.

After the last fight, she had used quite a bit of MP to guarantee the kill.

[Shiro – Ice Mage]

[HP: 50,000/50,000]

[MP: 64,500/75,000]

Shiro frowned a little when she saw that she was still missing 10.5k MP. A single MP potion regenerated around 20k MP. If she used another potion, it would be wasting an additional 9.5k MP that could have been regenerated.

‘Better safe than sorry.’ Shiro thought as she could do quite a few things with 10.5k MP. Especially since her link’s weren’t broken in the simulation world.

Thinking of the broken links, Shiro could only lament the fact that she didn’t check on the ways to heal them before.

In her previous life, people had already found the fix to broken links, saving the lives of those who were either born with this defect or when a person almost died by having their links destroyed.

Yet, she had never paid it any attention since she didn’t think she would need to know.

However, now that she was suffering from her broken links, she had no idea on how to fix them.

Sighing in regret, Shiro could only try to find the solution herself.

Naturally, she could also try to find herbs or medicine that invoked a full-body rebirth. One that cleansed the body and spurred the hidden potential a person had.

She wasn’t sure if this would fix her broken mana links but it was still hope.

Shaking her head, Shiro decided to put it to the back of her mind for now. She could take her time to find the herbs later when she left the city. However, that in itself was a hard task due to the fact that the few types of rebirth herbs she knew grew in places that were guarded by powerful beasts. As to whether or not she could take the herbs under their supervision was a question that didn’t even need to be asked.

She would die no doubt.

Packing up her items, she left the room with the spear on her back.

She wanted to make her way towards the centre since the ring should be closing soon.

Opening the window, Shiro checked for any enemies before jumping to the next building across from her.

Her travels continued for a while with her being able to see the occasional player being eliminated.

*BRR BRR BRR BRR!!!

Alarms started to ring out, halting her steps.

[Ring closing]

Seeing the alert, Shiro knew she had to pick up her speed. Looking towards the map, she saw that she wasn’t too far from the first ring.

‘I should set up a vantage point so I can see who’s left.’ Shiro thought as she wanted to see how many people were still in her general direction.

Jumping from roof to roof, Shiro approached the top of a small shop and started to set up.

The shop was located a little bit away from the ring. It had a great view due to the fact that none of the buildings and cars blocked her sight of the main road. Meaning whoever ran towards her would barely have any cover to hide in.

Stabbing the spear into the wall, she continued until a hole was poked through. This was so that she could look at whoever ran towards her without giving her position away.

Right now, there were still 10 seconds for the ring to appear so she took this moment to look at the player list and see who’s still in the game.

‘This island still has 23 players left. Desert island has 18, the rural village has 26 and the mountain area has 31. With 98 players left, that means another 88 players need to die before I can enter the next round.’ Shiro thought with a frown. 88 players weren’t a small amount especially since most of them were higher level than her.

The main issue came with the ring that was closing in. As the playing field get’s smaller, the chances of running into someone increased. While that may mean 88 players will be gone at a faster rate, it also meant that there is a higher chance for her to be eliminated.

Peaking through the hole, she checked to see if anyone was coming.

‘No one yet.’ She thought.

Checking back with her map, she saw the ring already consume the outer area at an astonishing pace.

Time ticked away by the second while the ring closed in slowly.

By the time the ring was in view, Shiro narrowed her eyes and focused her attention.

She wanted to eliminate someone else and help reduce the number of people left. This would, in turn, increase her chances of survival.

Naturally, the second-best option would be to hide and wait till they pass her. This way, she’ll be able to attack them from behind.

Seeing a faint figure moving from rooftop to rooftop, Shiro vaulted over the ledge and rolled into the store.

Since he was on the rooftops, he would see her hiding on the top of the store. Waiting for him to pass her, Shiro waited to see if she could find anyone else.

‘Seems like it’s just him. Anyone else would be consumed in the ring.’ Shiro thought.

 Coming out of her cover, she jumped back onto the roof of the store.

Narrowing her eyes towards the skyscr.a.p.ers, she planned her route upwards.

Taking a deep breath, Shiro dashed forwards at one of the slightly taller buildings.

Jumping up, she kicked off the rails and increased her momentum upwards. Grabbing the railing, she swung herself up, adding on to her previous momentum.

After a few swift movements, Shiro landed at the roof while panting heavily.

Tilting her head back, she saw him bunker down at one of the skyscr.a.p.ers.

Breathing out to calm herself, she looked at the distance between them.

‘I need to get past 3 buildings and roughly 30 floors to get to him.’ Shiro thought.

She needed to get to him quickly and quietly to ensure that he doesn’t discover her. Stepping back slightly, she did a short run-up before her body burst with her maximum speed possible.

Due to the insane control over her body, she was able to push it to the maximum speed it could output.

However, if she was in her old body, she wouldn’t even need a small run up. She was able to go from 0 to 100 almost instantaneously.

Jumping across the gaps, she stabbed the spear into the side of the building before using it as a jump pad.

Flicking her wrist, an ice spear formed in her hands. With two spears in hand, she leapt over the railing.

Thankfully, his back was turned away from her.

Twisting her body in mid-air, Shiro threw the ice spear followed up by the second spear.

“Hm?” The sniper was alerted and quickly turned around.

‘It’s her!’ He thought, recognising Shiro.

Aiming his finger at the spear, he disregarded the MP cost and shot his fastest lightning bullet.

*BAM!!!

Shiro bent backwards to dodge the bullet.

‘Tsk, he reacts fast.’ Shiro thought.

Landing on her feet, she quickly dashed towards him with her sword in hand.

*CLANG!

Metal struck against metal as the sniper also brought out a sword.

Stomping down, Shiro froze the area under them.

Letting go of her sword, Shiro pivoted her body towards the sniper. Slamming her elbow into his stomach, Shiro them grabbed his collar.

Yin Style Phantom Arts: 3rd Phantom – Counter Weight Phantom.

Flipping his body over her’s, she quickly made 8 ice flying daggers in her hands. She jumped up before throwing all the daggers, 4 at a time.

*BOOM BOOM!

The daggers exploded into shards upon contact, dealing more damage to him.

While he was able to react at first, Shiro outpaced him with her other movements.

This allowed her to create a gap in his defence and strike at him.

In the simulation, everyone had either 50k HP or 75k HP. While the body stats may be different, the HP was the same. Therefore, as long as her damage output was enough, he would die before recovering.

Creating more daggers in her hands, she threw them at him before he could even recover from the previous attack.

Gritting his teeth, lightning-sparked around him and shot everywhere.

Making an ice shield, Shiro blocked it whilst creating an ice bear trap.

*BOOM!!!

The trap clamped and ended the last remains of his HP.

“Fuuu…”

Shiro quickly threw an MP potion in her mouth while checking out for anyone else who wanted to take advantage of the fight.

Seeing that no one was around, she sighed in relief.

The fight just now was dangerous since a single close call of the lighting bullet took a quarter of her health. Imagining how powerful it was with a direct hit made her shiver.

Checking her loot gain, she was pretty surprised that the man only had a few potions, weapons and a binocular.

The weapons where pretty poor while he only had HP potions left.

‘Makes sense since he was a sniper after all. He would barely need to go close quarters combat if he played his cards right.’ Shiro thought.

Checking in the current progress of the round, she saw that there was a total of 74 people left. Just in that short moment, 14 people had been eliminated including the sniper she just killed.

‘With 25% of the overall map already eliminated, there should only be –’

*BOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

Her attention was suddenly shifted when she saw a huge explosion in the far distance. Her eyes widened as she recognised it.

‘Did someone just self-destruct?! How vicious. Taking down other people since he couldn’t win.’ Shiro thought.

Checking the player count, she was shocked to see the explosion take 5 other players, not including the killing.

With 6 more players gone, only 68 more eliminations to go before the top 10 appeared.

‘Only 68 more to go before the round ends…’ Shiro thought, gazing towards the centre of the island.