CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Jason's eyes widened as he re-read the parts broker's requests.

The Tournament of Assassins...

Although it wasn't an official Overdrive map, even a behind the scenes player like Jason had heard about the infamous competition.

The stage was only available to the public on the last day of each month. It was one of the few player-created maps considered superior to even the Overdrive Corporation's own offerings.

The monthly event was run by the Illusionists, one of the top ten guilds on the server. Some months, their earnings hit the top three, just beneath The Hive and vermillionangel's Red Fighters.

Unlike other guilds, the Illusionists specialized in stealth, deception, and information gathering over combat. Although their leaders lacked the awe-inspiring control skills of Twister or vermillionangel, the Illusionists were always the first organization to discover secret shortcuts and passageways.

Rather than attacking a map boss head-on, they flanked and stabbed them from behind.

Jason knew that the Illusionists had to be respected despite their uninspiring control skills.

Jason had battled against several elite Illusionist guildmembers during his time as a One Star Boss.

The guild frequently used the Towering Crag and other early game stages as training grounds for new members of their guild. Jason's extensive knowledge of the Crag had kept him from getting attacked from behind.

However, the guild's mastery of deception and distractions, which ranged from smoke grenades to holograms to magical Spell Titan abilities, was a force to be reckoned with in battle.

Even with his mind on high alert, Jason had been surprised countless times.

The Tournament of Assassins map would be far more intimidating than simply battling against a high-ranking Guild member.

Rather than challenging an individual player, Jason would need to circumvent several levels filled with tricks and surprises.

On top of that, the Tournament of Assassins was more than just a series of obstacles - the mission also involved player vs. player combat.

As its name suggested, it was a tournament of stealth and deception.

Not only were players incentivized to avoid battling Grunts head-on, but they were also actively penalized for it.

A Mech that weakened itself battling against the map enemies would be easy pickings for their fellow competitors.

The tournament involved a series of rounds held on different floors of the stage.

Each round involved eight players in a desperate free-for-all to try and assassinate a single enemy.

Normally, only a single player would advance.

However, players were allowed to form impromptu alliances, and only the participating members of the winning alliance were allowed to advance to the next floor.

These alliances were a big part of the competition, and players were incentivized to wheel and deal with each other.

Meanwhile, players who failed the mission were eliminated without question.

Unlike other maps, where players could log in right away for a second try, the losers had to wait another month to compete.

However, the Tournament of Assassin's greatest challenge was that the Salvage Rule was enabled.

The Salvage Rule allowed players to permanently claim parts from their opponents.

Normally, players' Mechs were protected during PvP and PvE missions. Even if their machine was destroyed, it would respawn safely in their inventory.

The Salvage Rule flipped that safety on its head.

Players were allowed to claim parts straight from their opponents. If you stole a part from an opponent's machine, it was yours to keep. On top of that, destroying an opponent's machine would transport their frame straight to your inventory.

The Salvage Rule greatly increased Jason's possible prize winnings, but it also led to enormous risk.

On top of that, the Illusionists also stood to benefit greatly from the Salvage Rule.

Unlike the Overdrive Corporation, the Illusionists didn't need to rely on the artifice of behind-the-scenes players running an advanced AI.

Every Mech on the stage was controlled by a real human.

The Grunts were controlled by low-ranked training members.

The Aces were controlled by one of their wily Guild Officers.

While the guild kept the map fair and balanced, the Illusionists ran a huge profit each time they opened the Tournament of Assassins map.

Any Mechs or items destroyed by their traps were added to the guild's coffers.

The confluence of risks meant that only skilled players bothered attending the Tournament of Assassins.

Truth be told, Jason was a little worried.

The upgraded Red Minerva was awesome. It would suck to lose it on his debut mission.

However, this mission was of critical importance.

If Jason skipped the Tournament of Assassins or lost, it would be the end of his hopes of forming an expedited relationship with OverManiacs. He would just have to earn $10,000 in parts, an option he hoped to avoid for now.

It wasn't just the sheer time it would take.

Jason had also noticed an extra hidden kicker in the deal.

Selling OverManiacs $10,000 in parts to get an expedited account was a significant loss.

Per OverManiac's deals list, regular players had to sell parts for a much lower price than players with approved relationships. In order to attain a special account, Jason would have to give up $13,000 worth of parts.

Guilds, which had hundreds of players searching for parts, were happy to pay what was essentially a three thousand dollar start-up fee.

An independent mapper like Jason was a very different story.

The confluence of circumstances meant Jason had no choice but to challenge the map and win.

Despite his trepidation, Jason was extremely excited to battle in the tournament.

A competition filled with high-level opponents on an incredibly challenging stage was exactly what he'd hoped for after leaving the Overdrive Corporation. It was the best way possible to hone his skills.

On top of that, the tournament had a totally different flavor than what Jason was used to.

While Jason had always used guile in his matches, he'd still focused on direct battles.

Sneaking around was one thing.

Using stealth to evade opponents was quite another.

If Jason had more time, he would have preferred practicing.

However, today was the last day for new players to enter the Tournament of Assassins.

After tonight, the Illusionists would no longer be hosting first-stage events. The guild would have moved onto second-floor events.

Just like during his battle against the Lamia, Jason had to be daring.

He had to leap right into the fray and try something new.

During his time as a One-Star Boss, Jason had learned how to always approach issues with a positive and focused mindset. It'd been so difficult to win that he'd learned to savor every victory and to approach battles with excitement.

He did the same thing here.

He swallowed the last of his doubts and worries.

He allowed his typically dominant emotion on the server - excitement to battle strong opponents - to become his sole line of thinking.

Jason confidently strode to the three boards at the far end of the platform.

A large huddle of players were gathered around it, but Jason passed through their piloting avatars without any issues.

He smiled as he stepped through the suddenly translucent bodies.

Although walking through other players was an immersion break, it was an enormous quality of life change.

Plenty of players had spent their time griefing by maliciously blockading the bulletin boards to keep other players from accepting missions or teleporting off the station.

The Overdrive Corporation often had to balance realism and player monitoring.

The Mechanical King had guaranteed every single player a trial by combat against a Moderator before punishment.

Unfortunately, there were only so many players skilled enough to be Moderators. Mass-griefing was better dealt with via a change in the rules.

Jason stepped up to the bulletin boards.

The first warp board from the left teleported players to the ranked arena.

Players competed in one-on-one or four-on-four matches to improve their in-game rank. Professional teams often scouted high ranked players on the ladder.

Although Jason wanted to focus on mapping for now, he was still very tempted by the idea of testing his skills on the ladder.

Unfortunately, the rewards just weren't good enough compared to the loot from maps. He'd have to challenge the missions during his free time if he ever got a day off.

The second and third boards transplanted players to PvE missions.

Of course, those PvE missions often included a PvP component as players vied for prizes. However, the main goal of the latter two boards was gathering as much loot as possible.

The second board brought players to planets and stages created by the Overdrive Corporation.

The last board took players to player-created maps.

Jason stepped up to the third board and quickly scrolled down the options before picking the Tournament of Assassins stage.

Tournament of Assassins #6: (7/8)

The #6 indicated that this was the sixth instance of the map launched that day. The 7/8 showed that there was only one more spot left before the map instance started.

Jason quickly clicked in.

The worst thing that could happen was joining a lobby that didn't fire.

The Tournament of Assassins competition would only start with a full complement of eight competitors.

If Jason waited for the next lobby, he might never get to play in the competition.

Whoosh...

Jason vanished from his place in the friendly and warm space station.

His screen was immediately covered in pitch darkness.

He looked down and saw the familiar cables and controls of the Red Minerva's cockpit.

The cockpit looked very different from the typical Hemoborn's.

Unlike the outer part of a machine, players could design the cockpit however they wanted. All the options were purely aesthetic and had no impact on the game. Although certain special cockpit skins could be purchased for additional money, most players felt that the base options were perfectly acceptable.

The Red Minerva's controls were a mix of smooth oak and elegant white leather, highly reminiscent of the interior of a luxury SUV.

The plain and innocuous design was largely unique in the world of Overdrive.

Most other pilots preferred fantastical designs.

The most common cockpits were overtly futuristic, but Jason had encountered a few truly creative appearances. Vile, the strongest Fortress Master, frequently equipped her Hemoborn Mechs with horror-inspired cockpits consisting of twisted blood vessels and nerve endings.

The creative look had caught on with other Hemoborn pilots who enjoyed playing up the fact that a Hemoborn cyborg's cockpit was located in the brain rather than the chest of the machine.

After joining the Overdrive Corporation, Jason had customized his cockpit, and he'd never looked back.

Back then, a fancy car had seemed totally unattainable, and Jason had just copied his cockpit design from a cool magazine.

By now, it seemed almost sacrilegious to change it - Jason knew the Red Minerva's cockpit better than he knew his own home.

Once he'd confirmed that he was inside his Mech, he took a quick look around him to gain a better idea of his surroundings.

He was sitting in an enormous ship hangar with seven other machines.

Based on the gunmetal gray walls and the plane's completely smooth and frictionless flight, this was a custom design by the Illusionists guild.

They were pampering the competitors with a show of power from the very start.

If Jason was right, the ship was a Nekra-class flagship, one of the Guild's signature machines.

The enormous supply carrier was designed to quickly and efficiently move machines from one battleground to another. Its stealth capabilities were legendary.

They gave the Illusionists guild an enormous leg up during Overdrive's quarterly Guild Wars events.

Thanks in large part to the unique large-scale cloaking technology, the Illusionists had finished in fourth place at the last all-out brawl between teams and organizations, which had spanned countless planets and even the immediate airspace around the player spawn space station.

He glanced at the players around him.

Normally, experienced players could get an edge over competitors by scouting their opponents before the match. Although Grunts machines were able to hide their weapons until the battle started, Ace Mechs typically had their full statistical profiles revealed.

This wasn't the case here.

All eight Mechs in the hangar, including Jason's own machine, were covered by a thick black shroud.

The thick tarp wasn't a cloaking device or anything like that.

A master assassination guild like the Illusionists knew when simplicity sufficed just as much as technology. The cloak was simply thick enough to block off a Mech's visual cameras and built-in Scouter.

The players were not allowed to scout each other before the battle. They were expected to catch them off guard.

After all, this was a tournament of assassins, a competition of stealth and deception.

Instead of wasting his time trying to look past the shroud, Jason instead pulled up his mission dossier.

It seemed like the other pilots were shifting around to try and scout out Jason's machine, but he didn't pay them any mind. Jason already knew the Red Minerva's capabilities. She didn't have any special skills that would allow her to see past the tarps.

Jason might be at a significant information disadvantage if his foes were playing a special scouting Mech, such as a cyclops.

However, there was nothing he could do about that.

His best option was to maximize what he could control.

The players in the plane weren't Jason's only opponents.

The disciplined pilot started reading closely through the mission dossier.

The Illusionists Guild rotated the first mission regularly, which prevented players from getting a leg up with guides.

Players had to go into every mission without any prior data.

However, they were all given data about the map, the expected Grunt Mechs, and their targets right before the battle.

Once again, this emulated a group of assassins competing to go after the same target.

The key to success was using this information to reach the target before the other opponents.

Jason nodded after reading the first line.

MAP: FOREST

Each map had an overall theme.

The Forest map meant that they'd be fighting against bandits.

Jason read on.

The first category was environmental concerns. The biggest issue was the preponderance of wildlife. While panthers and leopards posed no threat to a Mech, the many predators meant it would be dangerous to leave your machine without a very good reason.

However, Jason typically stayed in his cockpit at all times. Very few players used a gimmicky style where they tried to hijack enemy Mechs.

The bigger issue would be the enemy Grunt Mechs.

There were two enemy types, and both of them fit well with the bandit theme.

The first enemies were the Guard Dog type Hemoborn.

Unlike the forest's conventional predators, these beasts had been genetically modified to be as large as Mechs.

The quadrupeds stood thirty-five feet in the air, tall enough to reach the lower part of the Red Minerva's chest. If they went up on two legs, they'd loom over Jason's dragon.

The Mechs were very lightly armored.

Like the Red Minerva's old One Star Boss form, they were mostly biological with very few genetic improvements or grafts.

Other than their large size, they had the constitution of ordinary dogs. Under most circumstances, Jason would have no problem mowing through them with his upgraded machine.

However, the Mechs had great senses of sight and smell.

Jason took a look at the diagram on the sheet and winced. The guard dogs were highly sensitive within a range of two hundred feet.

That enormous effective range would stave away all but the most cunning ambushes. With human pilots in the cockpits, it would be almost impossible to sneak past the guard dogs.

Jason's only options were to avoid the dogs entirely or to kill them from afar.

The second Grunt type consisted of standard Bandit Mechs.

While the guard dogs had been cyborg Hemoborn, the bandits were sturdy Kingbreakers. The Kingbreakers were based on robots based on hard science fiction, such as those from the Gundam series.

They made up for their lack of special abilities with sheer stats and raw power.

Even Grunt Mechs would be a hassle.

The Mechs each carried a set of basic armaments, allowing them to fight at all ranges.

They'd mounted compacted beam bows on their right wrists that unfurled once they were ready to fire. In addition, they each carried a wickedly curved heat saber slung behind their backs. The reliable weapons coated themselves in a layer of flame once activated.

Based on the stat reports, Bandit Kingbreakers were strong and reliable fighters.

While Jason could deal with them in small groups, he had to avoid fighting against four or more at once.

Of course, the biggest threat on the map was Jason's target.

Unlike many real-life assassination targets, who were usually much weaker than their guards, the Illusionist Guild Officers were far better pilots than the rookies who guarded them.

On top of that, they also operated far better machines.

Jason's target was a Paragon-class super robot known as the King of Thieves.

The Paragons weren't as overtly magical as the mana-using Spell Titans, which often looked alien or extradimensional.

However, the Paragons were no less potent in terms of special abilities.

The King of Thieves had the unique ability to steal an opponent's item without any restrictions. It simply had to point its open palm at a foe, and then the item would disappear before reappearing in its hand.

However, the ability was limited to three uses per map.

Jason frowned.

His primary plan was to kill his opponent from afar with the Pestilent Snipe.

The King of Thieves had a sturdy A-rating in defense, but an ultra-compacted bullet would inflict severe damage. Two or three shots should do the trick if nobody spotted him, and it would help Jason avoid the trouble of battling against an item-stealing ability.

However, Jason wasn't so naive that he would focus on just a single plan.

He knew he had to prepare for all eventualities.

There was a decent chance he'd end up attacking the King of Thieves from melee range.

Unfortunately, Jason had no idea how his Blazing Avarice ability would interact with the King of Thieves's item stealing ability.

If the King of Thieves stole one of the Blazing Avarice's replica items, would Jason be able to create another copy?

Could the Mech somehow steal the Blazing Avarice weapons system wholesale?

On the other hand...

What if Jason somehow grabbed onto the enemy machine? Could he claim the other Mech's item stealing powers as one of the Blazing Avarice's seven blueprints?

After all, the other Mech's ability was tied to its hand. While it was a bit of a slant definition, a hand certainly could act as a melee weapon.

It was impossible to say what would happen.

It was an intersection of two totally unique techniques.

"Hey! Hey!"

The urgent whisper jerked Jason out of his thoughts.

One of the other pilots in the room - Jason couldn't tell which - was trying to contact him on the private line.

Jason hailed the other pilot and opened a communications line.

There was no reason not to listen to him. If Jason disliked the other man's message or found him frivolous, it wouldn't be a problem to mute him again.

"Look. We need to team up. The others are all from the same clan. They are going to try to screw us over at every opportunity. Independent players like us need to stick together!"