Airi Ohara aimed with her bow from behind the bushes. Her unfortunate target was a tall boy in his late teenage years.
Maybe he was already twenty. Whatever his exact age was, Airi's sure he wasn't more than 25. From her observation back in the Purgatory, all the players were young, more or less her age of 19. That couldn't have been a coincidence.
Her target wore white shirt under an expensive coat, that had lost its charm due to the dirt smeared all over its silk black surface. His brunet hair was combed up and gelled, completing his picture as a filthy rich bastard's son. Vain, Airi mused. The sword the boy held was 60 centimeters long--short for a broadsword, but was light enough for him to swing around aimlessly at the bushes.
He's trying to find her. The mark on his right hand lit bright green, and so did Airi's. He might not look much, but he was at least smart enough to guess that the reason his mark glowed was because of another Player nearby.
"I know where you are, little prick." he shouted as he swung his broadsword around like a child having a fit. "I can feel you." he closed in, a smug smile plastered on his face.
"Idiot." Airi couldn't help but murmur. She felt the ground for an arrow without taking her eyes off her target. She knocks the arrow on her bow and drew.
Her bow was something she made out of a curved twig she chopped of a shrub, and a string she fashioned out of fibrous vines she found hanging down from an ancient tree. The bow was a bit too rigid, and the force needed to draw it was tremendous, but that's to be expected: She was in a different world, and used materials she was not familiar of. She couldn't hope to get the perfect quality in such a bare environment without the proper tools.
He turned her way and smiled even wider, thinking he got her.
"Come out, 'ya scared bastard. Or did your momma teach you to hide like a sewer rat?" the boy whines.
Airi had let him live long enough.
With a breath, her sleek fingers let go of the bowstring. The arrow flew through the bushes with a whistle. It settled into the boy's heart with pin-point accuracy. He fell to his knees, clutching the arrow on his chest.
Airi walked up to the boy, who then laid on the ground, writhing in pain as blood came out of his mouth. His swimming eyes followed Airi, who pulled something out of her ankle-high boots. A dagger, with a curved blade about six inches long. It had the color of obsidian, its black sheen a flash of the death that was about to come.
"Y-you..."
"I'm sorry." Airi closed her eyes and bowed to him, before bringing down the dagger upon his stomach.
His breathing stilled. The light of both their marks faded. She pulled her booklet from the hidden pocket inside her minidress and opened it. Written on the first page was:
Player 106
Airi Ohara
No changes. She turned it to the next page, an empty page, before flames burned words onto it.
Player 86 - Eliminated
She closed the booklet and kneeled beside the boy's body, whose name she didn't know. Whose name she didn't have to know. She can't afford to feel remorse. Not now, not ever. Remorse means death in this world, in this game. She can die only after she's found what her whole clan is looking for. Until then, she doesn't plan on dying.
The game had just begun, claiming its first victim.
Airi clutched her booklet and looked up at the blue sky beyond the tree leaves. It was no different from Earth's morning sky. Earth. She have to go back. Soon.
She opened her book on the second page, where Player 86's elimination was reported, and traced the words with her fingers.
158 Players to go.
---
The small confines of the cabin was saturated with green, by the mark on Frey's hand and the man's. The light of their marks kept trying to outshine each other, so much that the sunlight from outside was lost as soon as it poured in through the open door.
The two of them stood on opposite corners of the room, with Frey looking as confused as he was shocked.
"Generation. What do you mean by that?" Frey closed the door behind him. The man turned his attention back to the two cloth bags he brought in. One bag, he assumed from the black apple-shaped fruits peeking out of it, were full of food. The other bag had swords, clothing and various tools mixed in. The man started by pulling out equipment out of the second bag, which were a pair of leather gloves and a roll of what seemed like cloth bandage.
"It's exactly what it sounds like. Catch." The man threw the gloves and the roll of bandage his way. Frey caught them with both hands.
"What am I supposed to do with these?"
"Wrap your right hand with the bandage then put the gloves on. Or would you rather have your hand's back glow all day like you're some walking lantern?"
He did as he was told. He wrapped his right hand in bandages. however, some of the green light still escaped from underneath the layers of cloth, albeit muted. He then slipped his hands into the leather gloves, which was a perfect fit for his bandaged hand, but a lousy fit to his other hand. That takes care of his mark, but the man's mark still burned with intense Turquoise light.
"What about your mark?" Frey asked the man.
"This?" the man caressed the back of his hand with his fingers. "This is actually called Victorina's Symbol, or the Death Goddess' Crest. We call it the Bitch's Cross."
"That's misogynistic. I'll stick to calling it a mark."
"Anyway, I don't have to cover my hand like you do. My Cross is a bit... special."
The man smiled a devious smile, and it didn't take a genius to know he deliberately kept Frey hanging. Within seconds, the light of the man's mark began to weaken, until it went back to looking like a normal tattoo. Only then did Frey notice something different about the man's mark. If Frey's mark was a normal sword within two enclosing crescents, the man's was an arrowhead inside a full circle.
"Your mark is... different."
"My mark is an evolved one. At the start of the game all the players get the same mark as you, the standard Bitch's Cross. But after three months, give or take, considering you have grown accustomed to fighting, you'll start to notice change in the behavior of your Cross or "mark", as you want to call it. My generation calls it Evolution.
"The end product of Evolution differs from each Player. You can say that each Player will have a unique mark, although there's no hard evidence to that yet since I haven't met enough Players to say for sure."
"So," Frey eyed the man's mark like it was a fascinating gem. "Your mark, what does it do?"
"Mine's called the Assassin Sigil. I can turn its light on and off with only a thought."
"I can't see how that's useful... aside from the convenience of not having to wear gloves."
"It's well damn useful." the man retorted. "You don't underestimate the Cross' light, let alone the ability to switch it on and off.
"A Cross is like a signal emitter and a receiver at the same time. When two players get within certain distance from each other, more or less 30 meters apart, both their marks glow. Now this glow is a double-edged sword: it broadcasts to your enemy the faintest feeling of what you're doing at the moment, but on the other hand, you receive the same feed. Take note that you only perceive your enemy's movement when your eyes receives light from your own Cross."
"So now that my hand is covered,"
"Now that your hand is covered, it'll still glow, even if you won't see it. Likewise, your enemy's mark will also light up, but he won't know you're his enemy and he won't receive the feed of your movement, since your light is covered up."
"But since my eyes are not receiving light from my own mark, I can't receive a feed of my enemy as well, can I?" Frey interjected.
"You're quick to catch on kid."
"I'm already 20." Frey's eyes narrowed into slits.
"But," and his rebuttal was ignored. "You can still see the light of your enemy, assuming he's not also covering his hand. You'll know he's a Player, but he won't know you are."
"Useful."
"Useful. This game isn't played with just raw strength. This game will test everything you are, use every skill you have, exploit the most fundamental of weaknesses inside you. That Cross you have on your right hand, it's just one of the tools you would need to survive this game." The man looked down, at the back of his own right hand. For a second Frey saw the shadow of a grimace on his face, that went as soon as it appeared.
"You... know a lot about this game." he stared straight at the man's eyes. "Just how long have you been here, in this world, playing this game?"
The man scratched his head, heaved an irritated sigh. "Brings us back to the original topic. This game, you kids aren't the first ones to play it. This game has been going on for I don't know, maybe millions of years now. Every twenty Earth years, a new game is started, regardless of whether the last game had ended or not. So, if you're asking how long I've been stuck in this world, playing this game, I'd say about 20 years."
Just then, he finally understood what the man meant. He was a Player, of the last Generation.