"What the hell was that?!" the young man screamed, forcing himself to his feet after the explosion had thrown him back.
It made no sense. Like everyone else in the building, he had been playing it safe, crouching in one of the aisles and waiting for the right moment to move. His teammates had been spread out as part of a coordinated strategy, but now everything had fallen apart. His Graphto Watch confirmed what he already suspected, all three of his teammates were dead, respawned somewhere far from his current location, and that meant he was completely on his own.
He was screwed.
"Damn it," he muttered, breaking into a run toward the nearest cover.
He rounded a corner and ran directly into something he never saw coming.
"Argh! What the hell is that?! ARGH! ARGH!"
[You know there were better options available, so why did you pick a digger?]
"Shut up and show me the mission tab," Leo muttered, holding up the bloodied digger and looking down at the student on the ground.
[Mission in progress.
Let the game begin.
Objective: Earn 200 points on the first day. [00:19:58:42]
Progress: 50%
Reward: A shadow skill.
Failure: All stats set to negative.]
"I've taken out two people and I'm only at fifty percent?!" Leo muttered, genuinely annoyed.
Like everyone else, the explosion had caught him off guard at first, but he'd quickly worked out what it would do, flush out every student who had been hiding, either because they panicked or because they wanted to take advantage of the chaos. Either way, people would be moving, and moving people were easier to deal with.
That left him with one problem: weapons.
He needed something he could actually use, not just for defense but to earn points consistently. The issue was that he had no memory of the character he was inhabiting, which meant he had no idea what Leo was naturally good with. Picking up a sword without any sword skills would probably get him killed faster than anything else in this building.
He'd considered archery. Long range was appealing, but his accuracy without any training would be terrible, and the moment someone closed the distance on him, he'd have nothing to work with in close combat.
He scrolled through the rest of the options. Every weapon had something working against it, and most of the drawbacks outweighed the benefits given his current stats.
Then he found the tool section.
It was meant to hold survival tools, but tucked inside was something that could work as a weapon, and more importantly, selecting something from the tool section didn't count as his weapon choice, which meant he could still pick a proper weapon later.
He had two options: a shovel or a digger.
The shovel had a flat edge, which meant it couldn't deliver a clean lethal hit, and against students who were reinforcing their bodies with mana, knocking them out wasn't a realistic outcome.
The digger could deal serious damage with repeated strikes. The only real concern was whether it could penetrate mana-enhanced defenses, but that problem had a straightforward answer: don't let them see it coming.
Sneak attacks.
And as it turned out, that worked just fine.