The clock was ticking down. Femi didn't like this.
He was the last person alive on his team. Everything had turned to shit. The kill box was slowly shrinking against him—a typical 1v4 situation, forcing the remaining five players into a small, suffocating circle.
SWISH...
A bullet whizzed past his head. Femi didn't even flinch. It wasn't enough to draw a reaction out of him. In his headset, his dead teammates kept screaming and shouting, trying to coach him from the grave.
"Guy, drop gloo wall, na! You go lose this game for me!"
He muted them.
Silence. Perfect, tactical silence. Just what he needed to think.
Femi began to analyze the situation. The final circle was stunted—a bad position for him, but nothing he hadn't dealt with before. The four enemies were on the high ridge of the hill; they didn't even bother to conceal their location. They thought they had the Booyah in the bag.
Unfortunately for them, their opponent was Femi.
He took out a smoke grenade and tossed it a few meters in front of him, then began to reposition—not into the smoke, but wide to the left.
The smoke was just bait.
Soon enough, they noticed the dark cloud forming roughly 60 meters from their position. They were running straight for it.
sloppy.
Femi was carrying an AWM with max attachments. Long-range kills wouldn't be an issue. Two enemies were heading for the smoke cloud; the other two were still up on the hill, hoping to spot him. They didn't know his position, though.
He quickly took aim and fired at the closest player, around 100 meters away, waiting for the hit marker.
CRITICAL HIT! -236 HP.
The guy dropped instantly. The second runner noticed his teammate hit the dirt and tried to throw up walls to avoid sniper fire.
But he was a tad bit slow.
CRITICAL HIT! -213 HP.
He hit the floor, bleeding out next to his dumb teammate.
Although the enemies on the hill weren't aware of Femi's exact position because of the silencer, if they were wearing a proper headset like his, they could tell the general direction the bullet came from.
A 2v1 is doable, Femi thought. Take the fight to them.
He threw another smoke grenade 30 meters in front of him to mask his approach. The enemies obviously saw it and, surprisingly, began to advance towards him. They had the high ground. Even after seeing the double headshot, they still thought this would be a numbers game.
Amateurs.
Femi was already inside the smoke when they began to rush him. He gripped his MP5 with maxed upgrades; his active operator's skill was fully charged.
They were advancing on the cloud quickly.
20m.
15m.
10m.
5m.
Now.
He activated the skill. Electricity-like energy surged through his operator, and he blitzed out of the smoke, perfectly executing the movement to appear behind the first opponent. He flicked his screen around and pressed the fire button.
The damage counter released a flurry of numbers—-11, -13, -15, CRITICAL HIT!—signaling the knockdown.
His opponent froze, reflexes dulled by the sudden chaos. He was holding an M1887 lever-action shotgun, but he fired a fraction of a second too slow. Femi was already behind a wall.
His operator's skill recharged with each knockdown. He had another charge ready.
Femi waited for the shotgunner to exhaust his ammo, then activated the skill again, blitzing out of cover and flying towards the final enemy. The guy was stuck in the middle of his reload animation when Femi pressed the fire button.
CRITICAL HIT!
QUADRA-KILL!
The screen froze as the golden letters BOOYAH exploded across his vision.
Femi sat back, his heart rate perfectly steady, though his fingers shook a bit from the adrenaline dump. It was one of the few places the world made sense to him.
Input. Output. Strategy. Victory.
Out of nowhere, a slap hit his back—way too heavy.
"FEMI, MY GUYYY!! SEE CLUTCH!!"
The game world dissolved. The smell hit him first—stale sweat, overheating computer towers, and the dusty heat of the afternoon. The roar of the diesel generator outside drowned out the ceiling fan that was barely turning above his head.
Tunde was grinning down at him, sweating through his school uniform. "I really thought you were gonna lose that game. You wey no get level," he laughed. "That was pure luck, wallahi. Pure luck."
Femi looked at his screen, then up at Tunde, suppressing the urge to show his irritation. He didn't bother to explain the tactics. He didn't explain the smoke bait or the reload timing. Tunde wouldn't get it.
Femi just took off his headset and shrugged, shrinking back into his chair.
"What
ever, guy," he answered quietly. "Just luck."