“Also, in the middle of the circle is the center of the castle—the keep? Anyway, it’s a big ol’ thing. That’s about a mile and a quarter across. And it’s, um, a couple stories tall? It’s like the base of a cake. The roof of the middle part is like a big open space. It’s flat, but with a bunch of obstacles, so you can actually fight there. You know, like a coliseum-style training map.”
The training maps were places where GGO newbies—or more seasoned players—could practice their shooting and other tactics. The “coliseum-style” map was the simplest kind.
The ground itself was perfectly flat and similar to concrete; the actual material, like everything in GGO, was a mystery. There was no physical texture to it. The color was gray.
And placed at random but appropriate locations were barricades or obstacles made of boards that you could hide behind. The barricades were cream-colored and six feet wide. They came in simple rectangular shapes and sometimes had stepped corners that allowed for better aiming. They were four inches thick, also of indeterminate material.
These barricades could receive damage, too. In other words, they could be shot and destroyed. They’d block ten or so pistol rounds, and five shots from a rifle, but anything more than that could cause spontaneous destruction of the barricade.
The trick was that they wouldn’t take localized damage that chipped away at the material. No, once it crossed the damage threshold, the entire barricade would simply vanish. That was what made it scary.
After ten seconds, the barricades would reappear like normal. They needed to, or else the battlefield would quickly turn into a barren, empty arena.
The point was that you couldn’t simply hide in one spot for the entire time. As the barricades went down, you had to keep moving around tactically from spot to spot.
GGO players used these training maps to get their fill of shooting practice, increase their skills, and prepare to leave the nest.
“The flat area is connected to the ramparts with these thin, long bridges. A bunch of them. But you probably shouldn’t use them anymore, since you’ll get shot from every direction. It’s better to just give up and get through the maze. I’m up in a round tower that comes up from the edge of the foundation; it ends in a pointy spire, but there’s a space like a belfry below it, only this one doesn’t have a bell in it. I guess I’m about three hundred feet off the ground. I’ve got a really good view. Um, there are eight towers all spaced out, and I’m in the one the farthest to the north. That’s all I can tell ya!”
So it was like a rounded platter with a tall rim—and a big cake in the middle with eight candles coming out of it, Llenn imagined. It looked tasty.
“All right, thanks. If it’s safe, I want you to stay there. And if you can see enemies below, go ahead and shoot them,” M said.
No sooner had the last word left his mouth than there was a thwack! sound, and Clarence shrieked, “Ah!”
Did she get shot? Llenn checked the upper left, where Clarence’s previously full HP bar was rapidly dropping. It went from green straight to yellow. The speed was considerable.
It wasn’t an OHKO, was it? Like Pito! Llenn thought, envisioning the worst-possible scenario. Thankfully, the bar stopped shrinking when it got to the red zone.
There was only 10 percent left. She had been shot somewhere that could nearly have been fatal.
“Ouch! I got sniped! Dammit!” Clarence grunted. Someone must have picked her off while she was leaning out of the tower.
But from where?
“Aw, no, crap! Someone climbed the next tower over! Now if I stick my head out—eek! I’ll get shot!” she wailed, while the sharp sounds of bullets cracking and whizzing by sounded in the background. It was quite a deluge. Based on the speed of the shots, the enemy was clearly using an automatic sniper rifle.
If the castle keep had a diameter of 1.25 miles, then its circumference was about 3.9 miles, Llenn calculated. If you divided that by eight for the eight towers, that put the distance between each one at roughly half a mile.
Of course, it would actually be slightly shorter than that, because you were aiming on a straight line, not along the rounded circumference, which meant—ugh! It was impossible to calculate beyond this point. Someone else do it for me! It should be around twenty-five hundred feet.
That was a distance that a good sniper could still use. It wouldn’t be an easy shot, but this one managed to hit her on the first try.
“Thanks. Stay hidden and focus on healing,” M said.
Having a stream of overhead reports would be unbelievably helpful, but it would be cruel to expect that kind of assistance from Clarence and Tanya without clearing out the nearby sniper first.
And their guns, the AR-57 and Bizon, could not shoot back at that kind of distance.
The bullets could reach, of course—and you could spray them at the correct angle to land in the area—but it would not be accurate, and they’d just get picked off while they were attempting it.
Effective firing range was a cruel number. Unless other circumstances were on your side, you just couldn’t beat a gun with a longer range.
“Okay, I’ll do that! If anyone tries coming up the stairs to the tower, I can shoot them and drop grenades from above! As long as I keep my head down, I think I can stay put here for as long as I want, until the end of the game! So our team won’t get wiped out! But it’s so lonely… So hurry and get over here, guys!”
“We’ll head for the center, too, but first we want to rendezvous with the other SHINC members.”
“In that case, look for my teammate Shirley, too! I wanna use the shotgun in my second loadout—I practiced with it and everything! I had to put down big bucks for that one, and I need to at least shoot one person in the face before this is over!” Clarence begged, rather selfishly.
“All right. I’ll make it happen,” M said, ever the gentleman. “Now, as you know, Pito got killed a short while ago.”
“Yep.”
“It was a sniper shot. Based on the damage, it was probably Shirley who did it.”
“Whoo-hoo! You did it! You did it, Shirley! Way to go!”
“She certainly did.”
“Damn! I wish I could’ve been her spotter for that!”
She was, of course, talking rather gleefully about one of her teammates killing another one of her teammates.
That was just something that happened on this team. You got used to it.