“Pick up the gun, hurry up and pick up the gun!” Henry Cooper was so anxious watching from the side that he couldn’t sit still. The situation Ethan Brooks was facing right now was even more nerve-wracking and exciting than if he were in it himself.

“Pick up the gun!” The same thought flashed through everyone’s mind on the Super Shadow team.

However, even top players on the team like Sophia Dean and Daniel Miller were overshadowed by a sense of foreboding.

It’s not that simple!

On the Demon Claw team’s side, Matthew Scott said to Samuel Young, “He can’t pick up the gun faster than you!”

Yes, from their screen-peeking perspective, the Super Shadow team’s player and Samuel Young’s “Kill one” were almost equally distant from the two shotguns, but this was the moment when the difference between a master and an ordinary player showed. When it came to picking up the gun and loading it, Samuel Young could only be faster than an average player, never slower. That split-second difference—if the gun is loaded, it’s the difference between life and death!

They reached the shotguns at the same time!

Ethan Brooks had no chance...

Sophia Dean’s crisp voice came through the headset, “Remaining members of Group E, head north and regroup with me. There are resources here, let’s gear up first.”

She said “remaining members,” clearly referring to the four with Henry Cooper, and as for Ethan Brooks’s outcome, for experts like them, they had already predicted he would be eliminated. Now, giving orders and stabilizing morale was most important.

“Nameless” and “Kill one,” the two killing gods, bent down to pick up their guns at the same time!

Ethan Brooks’s fingers flew across the keyboard. As his left fingertip pressed the hotkey to open the menu bar, his right hand rapidly clicked and dragged the weapon, tossing it into the character’s equipment slot.

In the battle royale games Ethan Brooks had played in his previous life, there were actually tricks to picking up guns. Sometimes, certain subtle operations could make the action of picking up a gun a fraction of a second faster than normal.

For example, in those games, using both mouse buttons together to pick up the gun and ammo was the fastest way, but it required precise and steady hand movements to drag the weapon. This was a normal and reasonable difference in the game, because the game would default to the character performing a related action when picking up a weapon, and different ways of picking up gear would shorten the action time.

But this difference was hard to notice. Only after the game had been played for a long time did someone use professional methods, comparing frame by frame, to discover this difference.

Ethan Brooks had spent a whole day reacquainting himself with and exploring this game, “Hot War.” He found that there were also such tricks to reduce character action time, but this time it wasn’t just left-click dragging the gun and right-click picking up ammo. Instead, it was about closing the equipment menu with a hotkey at the exact moment when dragging the gear with both mouse buttons just crossed the character slot boundary.

If the gear crossed the equipment slot, the long pick-up animation would still play. If it didn’t reach the character’s equipment slot, the weapon wouldn’t be picked up.

Only when it just reached the center line of the character slot and the menu was closed would the character’s action be minimized, and the game would already register the gear as picked up.

“Damn it, I’ll blast you with my shotgun!” Samuel Young shouted in the public channel.

At that moment, Ethan Brooks finally responded, “The villain dies from talking too much!”

Shotgun in hand—“click!”—a shell was loaded.

Ethan Brooks completed the action in one go, controlling his character to raise the shotgun.

Meanwhile, the killing god “Kill one” had just finished loading a shell and was raising his gun.

Boom!

A single shot.

The killing god’s gun barrel was slanted against “Nameless’s” shoulder, while the “Nameless” controlled by Ethan Brooks, crouched, one hand on the ground, the other holding the double-barreled shotgun, pointed at a gun-wielding, now headless body.

Headshot.

Samuel Young: “???”

What the...!?

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Chapter 10: Wiped Out in One Go

A hush fell, both in Sky City Internet Café and Demon Claw Net City.

Ethan Brooks’s line, “The villain dies from talking too much,” still echoed in everyone’s ears.

Samuel Young stared blankly at his headless character. The mosaic that had just exploded onto the ground quickly reassembled back onto his character’s body, and then the character entered a near-death state, propped up on both hands, kneeling on the ground.

In the near-death state, there was still a sliver of health left, but it would keep dropping over time. In this state, you could only crawl forward at a snail’s pace, and aside from begging your opponent, “Big bro, please don’t kill me,” you couldn’t do anything effective. If no teammate came to bandage you or heal you, your health would soon run out and you’d be truly eliminated.

So everyone watched as the legendary “killing god” was reduced to this “orz” state.

Samuel Young was a bit dazed too. What... just happened? Was it a moment’s carelessness, a bad mood, network lag, or did he really die from talking too much? In any case, he was half a beat slower, and as a result, the other side got the gun, loaded it, and blew his head off.