Chapter 3: Cold Bear

A figure was streaking across the forest floor in Heavily Domain. Behind it was a mass of players. Bullets flew at the figure, who dodged them all.

"Blyat." Igor Stein cursed. That last volley of fire was even closer than the prior once were.

Igor had been playing glory with his Striker account, Cold Bear. He had equipped items that boosted his movement speed or increased his stamina.

He was out scrap picking.

Considered the lowest form of playing, scrap picking involved picking up the remains of players that had died. When a player died outside of a dungeon or arena, there was a chance that they would drop some of their equipment or inventory items. This usually occurred when they were fighting Wild Bosses or if large groups of players were PKing (Player Killing) each other. There was also the chance of snatching the drops of the defeated Wild Boss.

This is what Cold Bear had been up to. Though Scrap Pickers would normally be Thieves, Assassins or Ninjas, any class that could move fast was useable for scrap picking. And with Cold Bear's choice of equipment, most of which he had made himself for this purpose, he was completely able to pick to his heart's content. As long as he did not do anything too foolish.

Which he might have done now.

The guild that supported Team Samsara had defeated a wild boss. Their victory had come easily as no other in game guild had come to oppose them for the Boss. So they had relaxed their guard.

Cold Bear had charged in, snatched up almost all of the drops and charged right out again. As it was a forested area, Samsara had been unable to see him coming him, but was still able to pursue him, and they were harassing him endlessly. Due to the fame of the Sharpshooter Cloud Piercer played by Zhou Zekai, a player for Team Samsara, their guild contained an almost disproportionate amount of Sharpshooters.

So even if Cold Bear could outrun all the classes, the Sharpshooter could still shoot at him from a distance.

Normally if rare materials were picked then a scrap picker would sell it again, usually for real money. But Igor had a rule of not selling in game items for real money. And he intended to keep the material he had picked. After all, he made his own silver equipment and rare materials were the key to making better equipment.

He had been running for some time now. As he ran through the forest he would never take the easiest route. He would move through tree clusters that looked hard to move in in an attempt to shake his pursuers. This required him to pull some spectacular moves. So far he had done this twice.

Not knowing if his luck was going to hold in the manoeuvring department he began heading in the direction of the closest city. If he can make it into the city and into the PvP arenas he would be in a "safe" zone and be able to log off.

Reaching a part of the forest he knew quite well, he climbed up a tree. The trees had large branches and were the best place to climb and jump from tree to tree by classes that were not proficient in climbing. He had spent some time in this area already and knew I quite well.

Jumping about in the upper branches to avoid Samsara, Cold Bear noticed something ahead. A large group of player were gathering. Taking a chance he went straight for them.

When he arrived he saw they were all player from the Guild Tyrannical Ambition.

These players saw him approach and first thought he was just someone jumping about in the trees. After a moment, a rain of bullets followed him. Then a mass of angry players followed behind him.

Cold Bear descended and landed between the Tyrannical Ambition players. Sending a sorry emoji above his head he streaked through their formation. The next moment Samsara arrived.

They had not expected to meet each other. Many in the Samsara ranks immediately assumed that the Striker they had been perusing was a member of Tyrannical Ambition. Tyrannical Ambition was a guild supporting Team Tyranny, and had a large amount of Striker players in their ranks for a similar reason that Samsara had many Sharpshooters, thus the misunderstanding occurred.

Not seeing how that fight would turn out, Cold Bear ran past all the Tyrannical Ambition players, and was able to lose his pursuers. Behind him was a bloodbath.

Arriving at the nearest city, Cold Bear immediately headed to the closest teleportation gate, and moved to a different city. This would through off any further pursuit from Samsara

Dropping off his loot in his Vault, he noticed he had received several messages while running around. Opening his message board, he saw he had messages from Geng Lei's character Tea Time Taker, and from Qin Kun's Dynasty Bound.

As he had received more messages from Tea Time Taker, he began with the one from Dynasty Bound.

Cold Bear scanned through the message. Dynasty Bound had the habit to type long messages, with some unnecessary information in it. Finally, Cold Bear summed up the message in his head.

After more than a month of searching, Dynasty Bound had finally found everything on the list Cold Bear had given him to make the silver equipment. He wanted to know when he can give him the items.

Cold Bear typed an equally long message in reply. But his reply was to the point on where to meet and confirmed the stats that the equipment will have once finished.

Sending the message Igor minimized the game and checked that he still had the blue prints for the silver equipment on his computer and had not already moved it to his hard drive. Seeing it was on his hard drive, Igor made a mental note to find the hard drive, and entered the game again.

Opening the first of Tea Time Taker's messages he saw she had asked him if he wanted to join in for a dungeon.

The second message was he retracting her prior message. Cold Bear looked at the time on the messages and saw they were several minutes apart. They had also been sent to him quite some time ago. Shaking his head he was sad that he could not join in. there was a third and forth message from her. They were the same as the first two.

"Oh well. Looks like I won't be going on a dungeon raid this time. Might as well get something to drink." Igor said to himself. As he was about to log off another message arrived.

Opening the message he saw that it was another one from Tea Time Taker.

It was once again an invitation to join her dungeon party.

"Make up your mind. Cyka." Igor said aloud and typed a reply accepting her invitation.

"Why didn't you reply sooner?" she asked in a message.

"Even I have things I do in game." He replied. "Oh, where do we meet?"

"I'll send you co-ordinates to the location of dungeon entrance we are using. Get here quickly." She replied sending coordinates. Glory allowed players to see where they are on a in game map, and also showed them a set of coordinates. Players often used it to tell others where they or something important are.

"Give me five minutes. I need the bathroom and something to drink." Cold bear said standing up and heading to the bathroom of his apartment.

"NO. We need to get started." Tea Time Take replied, but the message was not seen for several minutes.

When Igor returned to his computer he had large glass jar with him. Setting it down where he would not bump it over, he directed Cold Bear to the coordinates.

"Let's hope I don't take this team out of a frying pan and into a fire." Igor said to himself.