Something he'd quickly confirmed about these people looking for him, was that they were rather unmotivated civilians put to work.
That did not stop him from killing them and looting their ammo, guns, and two backpacks for himself, which yes, was a heavy load, but he'd need it later.
After all, he'd already killed everyone but one of the women wearing a bullet proof vest, both because she'd been the one to stay in the car, and because she was the driver.
While no one was going to ask for an habilitation around a war zone, he'd get himself killed trying to simply drive away even if the roads were clear and the fuel tanks full. At least before he actually paid attention on how to do it and increased his dexterity.
The woman in question was quite quick to agree to carrying most of the stuff since there was a gun pointed at her, meaning that now most of the stuff they had, including the gas on the other car, was in the one they'd be using.
Keeping a hostage obedient during the process was rather taxing, but Aki realized that he knew a shit ton about what not to do, so when they finally started the car, he did not drop the gun despite how tired his arm was, instead pointing it to her abdomen in a resting position.
"I will be asking some questions now, I hope you do your best to answer them as you drive a bit away from your group's territory." He calmly asked the still nameless woman. "First, what's your name?" She gave him a side glance, but the blonde eventually answered with a stutter.
"Abi... Abigail." She definitely looked like a farm girl despite her way if dressing, so he did not question the name.
"Nice to meet you Abigail, I am Aki. I am sorry to be pointing a gun at you. " He sighed with a frown. "Next question, what was your group searching?"
"Other people. Sir." She complement after a moment of exitation, not getting any reaction from that.
"And did anyone look like they have a mission to look for someone in specific?"
His question confused the girl, but his meaning was pretty obvious. She nodded.
"And how many cars does your faction have?"
"Seven now." He mentally doubled the amount.
"Very good, now, please drive towards the other patrols. Tell me if you want someone sparred, I'm not here to kill civilians." He nodded, taking out some dry rations and a bit of water.
It was better to fight with only a bit of food in the tank after all.
*****
Two raids later, the sun was about to set when the second addition to his prisoners was done being tied up by his driver and checked by him, Aki now had a silenced weapon and two granades, plus some more experience in handling tied up prisoners.
Turns out, he's actually quite the marksman, because he'd obtained the skill for handling light firearms right after hitting his first head shot, but he could feel the skill was actually quite close to going up again after he'd downed ten more, with stealth a bit behind.
Something of note, and actually more important if he was being honest, was that apparently skills were the way to raise your attributes, he couldn't use special points like before the tutorial anymore. The NPCs couldn't see his panels, so he'd spent some time pretending to be vigilant while browsing his options.
There were two new panels in question, but they were just explanations on skill ranks and rarity. Nine levels of proficiency, Beginner-apprentice-journeyman-Senior-Pro-Master-Grand master-&#&@%$-*, the last two not even readable for him, and five levels of rarity, going from common to legendary like a normal RPG.
Apparently, there also existed innate skill, like mental corruption, that didn't have a mastery and provided better benefits while being harder to upgrade. One of those was supposedly the amount of status points he'd gain because of them. +1, +4, +9, +16 and eventually +25 to the respective related status.
It was nice to know he'd likely have a way to improve without being thrown in ridiculous and dangerous circumstances, but if after all the growth he'd experienced through his lifetime was only enough to get his skill to Uncommon, then he'd likely need something just as meaningful to make it reach Rare.
Aki had little doubt more unconventional and rare skill would be the way forward however. Even if common skills could allow him to reach S rank in each attribute, which was highly unlikely, he'd need dozens of them at high proficiency, and a game like this would simply not allow him to grind away at it's problems through wasting time on such basic activities, nevermind if he could actually figure out how to become better at so many activities the system reconized as skills.
Unfortunately, such thoughts could only be left for later though, as they were nearing a camp of briggands for all effects. The tires screeched, the car stopped and Abigail stepped out of the car with blood shot eyes as she stood under the aim of at least four assault rifles and likely the rumored sniper as well.
"HELP!" She waved, several people approaching the distressed woman. "My team, my team was wiped near the fourth street! I think it was only one or two guys, but they got the other car and went out for blood! You have to get them before Abi and Josh..." Throwing herself at the closest centry, 'Not Abigail' made a convincing act of someone that'd been runing for her life, grunting as her sudden move made pain shoot through her whole body, starting from the baddly bandaged bullet wound on her side.
The whole camp went into alert, the woman was quickly sent to the makeshift infirmary, her bangged and shot car to the garage, several teams arriving and leaving to search for this elusive enemy that had apparently taken down three patrols from the north west side.
The guy that opened the car trunk where Aki had been lying in wait died imediatly, bullet to the head. Before he could fall over something, the unconfortable young man pulled him inside the trunk and pushed himself out before closing the thing with the corpse inside. There was no one else in the room, and he didn't have anything like a game tool that would allow him to see siluetes through walls or the like, he'd need to get to a more futuristic mission setting if he wished to obtain it too.
This, however, ment that he just needed to murder his way through the mostly deserted facility and loot the corpses that did not yet know they were dead.
*****
[Light firearms: Apprentice - You know how to better utilise side arms, handguns, light machineguns and such better. When reloading with a light firearm, your dexterity is bumped one rank higher.]
[Stealth: Apprentice - You know how to better remain undetected. While in stealth any undetected attacks may temporarily stun the target and have them make less noise.]
While the first skill up made a lot of sense, the second was just straight out magic, because he sure as fuck did not receive the incredible capability of figuring out how to shoot people into falling over in a quieter way.
There were no surprises when fighting those that remained in the fort, the sniper he guessed would be there not actually even looking back as he tried to spot someone trying to get inside the base.
After he obtained the first thing the system actually considered to be an item, because apparently 'rankless' was also something possible, Aki had 0 problems putting the, already silenced, makeshift sniper to use.
Hell, he even put a bullet through the skull of a rat in another building after getting the skill from the system and happily noted how he was over halfway to apprentice rank with heavy firearms already.
A few more skills and he'd actually resemble a mercenary.
Getting Abigail and the would be doctor of the camp to follow him was quite easy after he'd practically cleaned the whole place, but then there was the problem of what to do with the several girls that were 'supports'.
Sure, the kitchen staff and that one guy that worked as a janitor were mostly left alone, but there were also five 'toys' for the best men around. Ultimately, he didn't care.
Aki may have become quite intoxicated with his killing spree and how smart he'd been about the whole thing, but he knew all of this was only possible because it was the tutorial. Things were ment to be easy, likely so he wouldn't just drop dead the moment he reach the first actual mission.
He took some things with him, but ultimately, left by himself, the base standing as a temporary fort for the dozen or so remaining civilians after taking one of the two reserve cars the leader of the place had hidden.
Of course, he'd left 'Not Abigail', whose actual name he'd refused to learn, with directions to her friends. He'd covered her eyes and put a smelly mask on her face so she'd not actually know where he'd tied them up and follow his instructions, including letting him shoot her and driving towards the bandit's camp with the whole charade of going after him.
It'd been even more effective than he'd first expected really, which ment he now had to ambush the remaining bandits so he could deal with his side quest.
{Side quest: The bandit lord
Description: While roaming the devastated lands that used to be a great metropolis, you have heard about an unscrupulous man taking over a still well equipped police precinct and using it as a base to gather followers of similar mentality as they abuse any non-combatant they find. Take him down.}
Nothing of the sorts had actually happened for him to get the mission, it'd actually popped out the moment 'Not Abigail' answered some of his questions, because he was already pretty sure something like that would be the case, it always happened in these game scenarios.
*****
Turns out Aki was even more sadistic than he himself had thought. Or using rocket launchers was just too good an experience.
The bandits had apparently possessed only some more cars than he originally thought, leaving the search party trying for his ass at ten cars and around thirty five\forty hostiles. They'd further separated into two squads, each with five cars in a line, so of course he had to use one of the two beauties the bad bandit lord had been keeping in storage to shoot the second car of the first squad to come back home, then pepper the driver of the first car with a light machine gun while the incredible high way incident happened in front of his eyes.
After being hit by the RPG, the second vehicle in line capsized backwards, knocking it's flaming front on the third car, which launched it's driver and co pilot flying, no seatbelts in the apocalypse, only for both cars to explode by the time his first clip was over, sending debris to the suddenly stopped fourth car.
This left three to four people for him to immediately deal with, the increased reload speed with light firearms was actually not that useful right now, as he needed to take care of their driver first, hopefully making time to use the machine gun after he'd sniped the man.
Yes, he'd left plenty of weapons and ammo sprawled around for this exact reason.
*Bang*
Driver down.
*Kacha, Bang*
The only guy moving to do something down.
*Kacha, Bang*
Head shot on the one running from the car on foot.
*Kacha, Bang*
Now there's also no one moving in the fourth car.
Aki had a great smile on his face as he reloaded the weapon in his hands, eyes on the burning road.
The sound of the gun firing, the pride that courses through him with every kill, the longing for more... He never felt so alive!