Alec's plan was simple: Infiltrate the boss's residence and kill him. That was what the game wanted him to do. Earlier, Diego sent his men to gather intel on the mansion. This includes the blueprint, the time of shifts of the bodyguards, and the boss's hotspots. Up till now, Alec was still waiting for them.
But he wasn't idle though. He kept perfecting his firearm until he was able to shoot a target at more than fifty meters. That was the limit a bullet can travel out of a small gun, Alec thought. Even if he tried to shoot more than fifty meters, the accuracy would drop significantly.
This had to do with the weather condition and the bullet's momentum. The longer the bullet stays in the air the more it was subjected to the conditions of the weather. Gravity was another thing to consider too.
That's why you must always know the limit of each firearm, otherwise, a minute mistake can cost you a lot.
Alec shot his three hundredth bullet on the red dot when the system popped a new notification.
"Shoot target three-hundred times. Points gained: 5 points."
Alec closed the prompt with indifference. Unless he knew what these points were for, he wasn't too keen on gaining it. While he closed it, he noticed other recent notifications.
"Killed NPC #1. Obtained NPC ability: Sniper Novice. Added to Abilities."
"Killed NPC #4. Obtained NPC ability: Sniper Legend. Added to Abilities."
So he can kill people and obtain their ability. Alec was slightly perturbed. First, he disliked killing people for any reason. The reason he was forced to do so was that he had to choose between his life and the other party, and he valued his life.
Another reason was that he didn't want Diego to be killed. Something tells him that the system placed Diego as his helper in the game so that you know, he would not get lost or sidetracked from the game's storyline.
Now that he thought of it, he realized he was able to kill a gunman from a good distance away from him, which surprised him. He only practiced with a small gun, therefore it was practically impossible to be good at sniper. He had learned it the hard way.
'I thought sniping was supposed to be a skill', Alec pondered. If he had learned how to use a sniper, the skill would fall to the SKILL category, so how come sniping was an ability? The only answer he could come up with was that "ability" was something one was born with, so having it as the ability has made me a born sniper, Alec assumed.
While Alec was thinking, Antonio, Diego's computer expert suddenly spoke, "I've found it!". Alec put the shotgun on his jacket and he, along with Diego's men approached him.
"What did you find Anthonio", Diego said flatly. Anthonio turned over his laptop to face Alec and the rest. "Look at this, the blueprint of the mansion. While I was trying to find the close match of the mafia's mansion, I stumbled across a piece of software. All I needed was to upload the photo of a building, which was, in this case, the mansion, and the software would output a detailed blueprint and all the orthographic sections of the house, up to 80% of accuracy".
Alec looked at the map and nodded slightly. This was a detailed map of the mansion. It was an indeed very big mansion. "Alright, one problem solved, good job Anthonio", Diego complimented. "Now all that remains is the intel of the inside. We are still waiting for it, and until then, let's use this time to understand this mansion's blueprint." Alec nodded in agreement.
The blueprint was a bit complicated. It had a lot of rooms and numbers of sitting rooms. He examined them carefully and noticed that the sitting rooms are arranged in such a way that they surrounded a room. This method was to make sure that he goes to his room from anywhere in the sitting room.
After Diego made a briefing about the architecture of the building, he printed out copies to his men and told them to study it further. Then he approached Anthonio and handed some pesos currency notes to Anthonio, who gladly collected them and packed up his laptop.
"Stop", Diego said firmly, jolting Anthonio to stop in his tracks. Diego approached Anthonio until his eyes were almost close to his. "If you blab about this to anyone, don't even consider yourself alive. You hear me?"
Anthonio nodded and whimpered. Diego then allowed him to go.
Alec took a printout and studied it closely. He wanted to understand this blueprint as much as possible. Having a photographic memory is one thing, but understanding it is another. If he wants the blueprint information to stick, he has to study it hard.
Even if the blueprint appeared to be complicated, it was necessarily not. It only looked complicated looking at it whole, but peering closer, he could see that the building was divided into sections, which were further divided into subsections.
"Everything is going well so far, do you think this would work at the end?" Diego said sitting down close to Alec who was lost in the blueprint. "What makes you think we will fail?" Alec asked without looking up.
"Nah, I don't think we will, I'm just saying if things do not work at the end...". Alec interrupted Diego before he could complete his sentence. "Let's not be pessimistic here Diego. Let's be focused and make sure this goes through, please", Alec said indifferently. Diego nodded slightly and walked to the shooting range.
Alec could not help but marvel at himself. He had barely stayed in this dungeon for a month, but his attitude had fully committed to this life of a gangster. Maybe it was the trauma of taking a human life and almost being killed multiple times.
Although he knew that the people he murdered were not real, the sight of the mangled mass of blood and flesh made it too real for him to differentiate. If not for these system prompts, he would doubt if this was a game. So far, he couldn't find any bugs.
This is some high-level shit, Alec thought. Who the hell was the creator of this ultra-realistic game? Even the current technology could not even pull this off, and a VR headset made in the 90s plays it well? More importantly, who was the man on that old pawn shop?
Alec shook those thoughts away and focused on understanding the blueprint. These questions would naturally be solved right after he completed this damned game.