Changed Targets

Ethan went to the other side of the city, before using another tracking compass. Another arrow appeared in his vision and followed it to a remote neighbourhood.

It was one of the poorer parts of the city. It wasn't maintained very well and several abandoned buildings were overgrown with shrubs. It was a ghetto.

Ethan walked carefully, avoiding tripping on the broken pathways. Similar to the place where his other target lived, the area here had an abundance of crime.

The people who passed by gave some weird looks at Ethan. He didn't live here and his clothes didn't match the area. But Ethan ignored it, as he would quickly fade from people's memories.

As Ethan explored, he hoped his new target wouldn't be as dangerous as the previous one. But even in that case, he believed he still would be better off. After all, this area was rarely policed. Well, it depended on who the target was.

After nearly an hour of searching, he found his target's house. It was run down, with the plants overgrowing. It was extremely small, with only a couple of rooms. This wasn't a friendly neighbourhood.

Ethan noticed that plants were consuming the fence to the back, and he could sneak towards the back of the house.

Since the shrubs could also serve as excellent cover, Ethan quickly enacted his plan. 

He quickly looked around, ensuring nobody was watching him. Then, as quietly as possible, Ethan climbed over the fence and into the backyard.

But as he was going down, he slipped and crashed into the bushes. A branch scraped his arm, causing him to bleed. 

Ethan's eyes darted around, checking to see if anyone saw what happened. Sighing in relief, he promised it wouldn't happen again.

His bleeding arm stung, but Ethan gritted his teeth and ignored the pain. He held his arm tightly as he walked around the backyard.

The backyard was overgrown with grass and other shrubbery. At this point, Ethan wasn't even worried about the owner spotting him. He was worried about the potential spiders and other insects biting him.

As he approached the house from the cover of the grass. From the backyard, he couldn't see the person inside the house, but he saw white smoke appearing from the windows.

Ethan caught a whiff of the smoke and realised the resident inside wasn't smoking regular cigarettes. It didn't smell like vapes either.

So he concluded his target or his associates were smoking cannabis or other similar drugs. 

'Wow, how carefree. My target should know people are trying to kill him.' Ethan mused inwardly.

Even if the player wasn't the one smoking, having someone around who was, was going to be detrimental to them.

Since Ethan didn't want to leave without knowing his target's face, he decided to make a riskier move. He probably wouldn't be able to find out much on the internet, so his only way to gather information was in person.

Ethan lockpicked the backdoor with the tools he had on him. He had gotten used to carrying the lockpicking tools around with him ever since he got the Survival skill. He also carried his bag with him that contained a rope as well as other tools he could use. 

This could backfire horribly, but Ethan decided to take the risk. If his target had inhaled some drugs, then their guard would probably be down as well.

With a soft click, Ethan entered the house. Making sure to cover his mouth, Ethan explored the small abode. He entered into the living room, which was smaller than the one he had in his home.

The sofa was ripped and the television was old. There was some old decor haphazardly placed, but that was about it. This house reminded him of his own. It was a very minimalistic lifestyle.

Then entering the tiny kitchen, he found the fridge nearly empty and cutlery strewn across the bench. It was very messy and he didn't want to stay there any longer.

Ethan unfortunately couldn't find anything related to his target's identity. So he had to look at his target. One thing Ethan realised from his murders was that he was able to judge the danger level of his target just by taking a look at them. Maybe it was something like killers recognising killers. He didn't know.

All he knew was that his target was in the front two rooms. He couldn't hear anything coming from the other side of the wall. There were no conversations. Ethan was 90% sure his target was alone.

As Ethan was about to explore the front two rooms, something caught his eye.

He turned around and saw a vase on the floor, with a small plant inside. The dirt around the vase didn't seem to touch the edge of the vase.

Checking nobody was nearby, Ethan tiptoed to the plant. He grabbed the top of the plant and pulled it out of the vase, similar to how a person would pull weeds.

He felt no resistance as the plant and the dirt slid out of the vase. As the plant was pulled out, some of the dirt fell onto the ground, but he ignored that.

Underneath the plants were bags of white powder. Ethan had never seen it before, but he instantly knew what it was.

Hard drugs.

In his shock, Ethan tripped backwards and accidentally knocked over the vase. With a loud crash, the vase shattered into several pieces.

Ethan quickly tried to escape, but as soon he turned around, he came face to face with the owner of the house, which the arrow in front of him was pointing at.

The target was a dark-skinned man, with short, greying hair. He was holding a gun in one hand and a cigar in another.

Throwing his cigar away, the man pulled out a compass from thin air and crushed it. Even though Ethan didn't have anti-tracking, he knew that an arrow was pointing at him.

Two players had come face to face.

"Well, shit."